nor indeed correct himself, once for all, when wrong. The moment he becomes conscious of a deviation from the true track, he leaves it again in the other direction. When the object to be reached is obvious, corrections are more frequently repeated. So it comes to pass that the fresh-stamped path over the mould is never straight, but a calendar of successive mistakes. Thus difficult is it to take the shortest cut. None but a ploughman can do so; and he can do little or nothing, except it be after long years of patient experience.
Walking the other day for some miles through fields, in which the track from gate to gate had been marked out by the passengers themselves, and lay always crooked on the ground, I fell into such an entanglement of thought about short cuts that, like as with a tune which you can get rid of only by humming it again and again, I found myself putting some of them on paper when I came home. And if the great excuse for an essay or soliloquy is its power of arousing reflections which the reader accepts as his own, perhaps my familiar reverie may not be uttered without some such effect. Short cuts: let me first beg the privilege of using them now, and whenever I see a fresh thought, make straight for it, though I may risk a blunder, and leave the correct progress of meditation.
Somebody said once that “there was no royal road to geometry,” and that neat reproof to a vulgar king has been caught up by so many, that no doubt there is a great principle involved in the saying. The principle is, that money will not buy genius; that the splendour of rank does not necessarily make the brain shine. But the philosopher’s rebuke is telling only on the assumption that regal power is external alone.
I hold it as certain, that there is a royal road to most ends, if the traveller be a born king. Every successful short cut is made by a regal mind. Some object has been hitherto approached only by tedious pains. The wise and the weak, alike, labour and wait. All at once the labyrinth in whose turns they are creeping is burst through, and one man’s force of brain and will destroys the inviolable hedge. Others follow over the gap; his short cut becomes in a common way but a royal road, for it was a king who first found it out.
Indeed, every true leader and ruler of mankind guides them thus. No nation will ever advance far at the word of command. The national wit stagnates, the schools hang on hand. The tutors teach the old formulas. The pupils thumb the old books. Everything is done, and must be done, with true conservative pains: no princely patronage can quicken the pace or the thought of the workers.
But all at once some mighty mind makes a short cut; invents a steam engine, say, and the whole nation, prince and all, masters and scholars, tutors and taught, follow in the wake of the new guide. The four Georges in succession might have patronised, bribed, threatened the united coachmakers of the kingdom, without finding any route from St. James’s to Windsor which a well-mounted butcher-boy could not take as well as they. But at last a great king came, and before long the successors of the Georges and their subjects sat behind Stevenson. There was a short cut: a royal road. Had there been no pains taken before this to carry travellers to their destination at the highest possible speed? Was not the posting system elaborated? Were not the coaches swift? What could you do more? There was a limit to motion. Horses have but four legs, and the suggestive whipcord fails beyond a certain point. But the commanding brain summons an iron steed, swifter and stronger than the fabled Pegasus himself. Possibly, however, some servant may be hereafter found better for our purposes than steam itself.
There is generally a long pause after a discovery. It is as if the energies of invention spend themselves, and need a lapse of years for another effort. The wheel and axle were an incalculable addition to our means of locomotion. Steam used and developed their powers: may be, however, our successors will see the railroad superseded, and future historians entertain their readers with accounts of the clumsy complication of locomotives, iron ruts, and express trains.
Generally, the royal road becomes at last not only vulgar but tedious, and then the independent genius makes a new short cut. But they must be made naturally. The stream which has to gain the ocean through a long tract of country, may not be taken without danger by a sudden leap into the sea. It may have its waterfalls and rapids, but it has duties to perform by the way; the meadow has to be irrigated, the mill to be turned. The cattle must be watered—nay, the linen must be washed. Don’t say that the sole object of the stream is to reach the sea. There is a gain in occasional slowness. So with man’s mind, with the progress of the sciences and arts. There may be sudden leaps or waterfalls, but it is well to pause when stage after stage of advance is gained. People must have time to take the good things in as they are found out. When the river has watered the fields of wholesome fruit and food, it takes another plunge; then the short cut is natural and right. Delay has done its healthy work; the last discovery has been understood and digested—we may make a fresh start. But if you force the journey, you may fail before the end. The river which circles slowly through the fiat, receives as much as it gives. Rain and rivulets have time to make an impression, whereas if it goes whisking by in a cataract, it issues from the chasm of smaller bulk than it descended. The fertile stream of progress must give itself time to be fed.
There is another thing to be remembered about short cuts. You may take them selfishly, uselessly, except as far as you yourself are concerned. The heavy diligence surmounts the Alps by a series of patient zigzags. It grinds on, climbing slowly up above itself with many halts, with much sweat and cracking of whips. Now, of course, if you choose, you can get down and cut off the corners of the road; but you do not thus help the party of travellers; nay, as often as not, you are hotter and more blown than they when at the summit you all take your seats for the descent. Besides, you have broken your shins and torn a large triangular rent