NOT the land that we live on,
nor the land we live from, but the land we live in; and that
land is a super-terrestrial, sub-celestial stratum of atmosphere which
clings affectionately to the elevations and depressions of this land we
live on despite all the revolutions and rotations of this planet, and
which gathers and keeps all the vibrations; that are whispered, shouted,
sung, painted or thought into it.
Lucretius, the great Epicurean
philosopher and poet, in his endeavour to explain the phenomena about him,
assumed that all bodies gave off emanations, idols or films in exact
duplicates of themselves; that in a given space there were millions and
millions of these films passing to and fro in every direction in infinite
complexity and still without confusion; that through these there passed
the images of man’s mind, infinitely more subtle and finer, and that the
still more subtle, majestic images of the Gods were flying down constantly
among the images of men. This is a suggestion of the land we live in,
whether you visualize it as Lucretius did or in vibrations—a land which
was inhabited at one time only by the spores of life, the star dust that
came down as immigrants from other worlds; and then by the images of the
aroma of wild flowers, the images of the cries of wild beasts, the images
of the flowering trees. But by-and-by there came others—the images of
human thoughts—and now there are billions upon billions of these images,
the images of the experiences, the sufferings and joys of human beings.
And by-and-by this atmosphere so populated will be as rich as the gray
mists that brood over the moors of Scotland.
You may think that I am a bit
visionary, that I am seeing things that are not. So I call to my aid that
very accurate and particular, almost meticulous historian, Justin Windsor,
whom I once heard say that if we but had instruments delicate enough we
might hear the prayer of Columbus as he approached these shores, that we
might hear the splash of the oar of Marquette and Joliet in the western
waters; and, if he had not been a New Englander, he would have added that
we might hear the footfalls of the Scotsmen as they went down the farther
side of the Allegheny Mountains to make that principality lying between
their crests and the Mississippi River "a Scottish conquest."
Or I might cite the iron-visaged
Bismarck—the very pragmatic Bismarck— who, when asked what a land or a
people was, said: "It is a multitude of invisible spirits—the nation of
yesterday and to-morrow." In devising our democratic machinery, our
referendum and direct primaries and all that, we are in danger of
forgetting these images of the past. They should still have their
suffrages. I do not mean that dead men should be permitted to vote— as
they do in some places—but simply that the purposes of the past should
have representation as well as the images of our hopes for the future.
That nation is not a nation, which forgets the past or which does not plan
for the future; which neglects the invisible company of yesterday and
supports no schools for to-morrow; it is simply an ephemeral agglomeration
of individuals: and this nation would not be, could not have been, the
nation it is if the emanations of Scottish character had not come in such
numbers to these shores. I shall not endeavour to prove it—I need only
admit it.
I treasure as one of my dearest
memories the reading to me of a speech by the late President Cleveland—a
speech he was never able to deliver. I have had the memory of it all these
years, but recently I came upon the address itself, and I will quote a few
sentences: for the land we live in—the one I am talking about—is the land
that was in his mind, though he called it, not the "Land We Live In," but
"The Land That Lives in Us."
"But how fares," he said, "the land
that lives in us? Are we sure we are doing all we ought to preserve its
vigour and health? . . . We need have no fear for the continued
healthfulness of the land we live in so long as we are dutifully careful
of the land that lives in us. . . . The self-watchfulness of which I speak
must be content with the inspiration of dutiful obedience to the
requirements of disinterested patriotism, and must look for its reward in
a just distribution among all our people of the benefits of a free
government and a lofty, devout consciousness of direct co-operation with
the purposes of God in the establishment of our nation." We must be
lastingly grateful to the land which gave Scotch ancestors to the mother
of Grover Cleveland!
There comes often to me in times
when there is so much complaint of things, the remark of a certain
Scotchrnan, of whom you have doubtless often heard—a man who was very
sparing of speech and exceedingly careful in the expression of his
opinion. When he was confronted by a new fact or statement, you remember,
he generally answered, "Weel, it micht ha’ been waur’."
Suppose our ancestors never had left
Scotland. Suppose George Rogers Clark never had prevented England from
making a province of that land on the
other side of the Allegheny Mountains, and we should now be trying to
establish reciprocity with that State which is producing presidents; and
suppose we should have to get all our presidents from New England and from
the Dutch descendants in New York. Suppose John Witherspoon and James
McCosh never had accepted the presidency of Princeton College. Suppose
Cyrus McCormick never had been born or had died young; and we should not
now be worrying about the International Harvester trust, but about getting
enough to eat; because with sickles and scythes we should not be able to
supply a fraction of our population with wheat. We could go on with this
imagining and supposing indefinitely—and reach a climax in this: suppose
that we, the flower of New York, the heather of New York, were not
in the land we live in! So I say, "it rnicht ha’ been waur’." It might
have been better if we had a few Scotchmen more; but if we had less—one
less even—it micht ha’ been and would ha’ been waur’.
