The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, August, 1864 | Page 2

serious and
substantial point of view, human life is a battle, which, for the
individual, ends only with death, and, for the race, only with the Final

Consummation. The tenure of our place and right, as children of God,
is that we fight evil to the bitter end. 'The Prince of Peace' Himself
came 'not to send peace,' in this war, 'but a sword.'
We may venture, then, to say that there are some wars which are not all
evil. They are terrible, but terrible like the hurricane, which sweeps
away the pestilence; terrible like the earthquake, on whose night of
terror God builds a thousand years of blooming plenty; terrible like the
volcano, whose ashes are clothed by the purple vintages and yellow
harvests of a hundred generations. The strong powers of nature are as
beneficent as strong. The destroying powers are also creating powers.
Life sits upon the sepulchre, and sings over buried Death through all
nature and all time. War, too, has its compensations.
For years, amid the world's rages, we had peace. The only war we had,
at all events, was one of our own seeking, and a mere playing at war.
Many of us thought it would be so always. We believed we had
discovered a method of settling all the world's difficulties without
blows. The peace people had their jubilee. They talked about the
advance of intelligence, and the softening power of civilization. They
placed war among the forgotten horrors of a dead barbarism. They
proved that commerce had rendered war impossible, because it had
made it against self-interest. They talked about reason and persuasion,
and moral influences. They asked, 'Why not settle all troubles in a
grand world's congress, some huge palaver and paradise of
speechmakers, where it will be all talk and voting and no blows?' Why
not, indeed? How easy to 'resolve' this poor, blind, struggling world of
ours into a bit of heaven, you see, and so end our troubles! How easy to
vote these poor, stupid, blundering brothers of ours into angels, in some
great parliament of eloquent philosophers, and govern them thereafter
on that basis!
Now, resolutions and speeches and grand palavers are nice things, in
their way, to play with, but, on the whole, it is best to get down to the
hard fact if one really wants to work and prosper. And the hard fact is,
that Adam's sons are not yet cherubs, nor their homestead, among the
stars, just yet an outlying field of paradise. It is a planet whose private

affairs are badly muddled. Its tenants for life are a quarrelsome,
ill-tempered, unruly set of creatures altogether. As things go, they will
break each others' heads sometimes. It is very unreasonable. I can see
that. But men are not always reasonable. It is not for their own interest.
I can see that too. But how often does interest, the best and highest,
raise an impregnable barrier against passion or even caprice?
We must take men as they are, and the world as we find it, to get a
secure ground for attempting the reformation of either. And as men are,
and as I find the world, at present, I meet Wrong, and find it armed to
resist Right. The Wrong will not yield to persuasion, it will not
surrender to reason. It comes straight on, coarse, brutal, devilish, caring
not a straw for peace rhetoric or Quaker gravity, for persuasion or
interest. It strikes straight down at right or justice. It tries to hammer
them to atoms, and trample them with swinish hoofs into the mire. Now
what am I to do? To stand peaceably by and see this thing done, while I
study new tropes and invent new metaphors to persuade? Is that my
business, to waste the godlike gift of human speech on this mad brute
or devil?
With wise pains and thoughtful labor, I clear my little spot of this
stubborn soil. I hedge and plant my small vineyard. It begins, after
much care, to yield me some fruit. I get a little corn and a little wine, to
comfort me and mine. I have good hope that, as the years go by, I shall
gather more. I trust, at last, my purple vintages may gladden many
hearts of men, my rich olives make many faces shine. But some day,
from the yet untamed forest, bursts the wild boar, and rushes on my
hedge, and will break through to trample down my vineyard before
mine eyes. And I am only to argue with him! I am to cast the pearls of
human reason and persuasion at his feet to stop him! Nay, rather, am I
not to seize the first sufficient weapon that comes to hand, unloose the
dogs upon him, and drive