ut the fact that none of them was foreseen by me, none of
them was planned by me, I was the author of none of them. Circumstance,
working in harness with my temperament, created them all and compelled
them all. I often offered help, and with the best intentions, but it was
rejected--as a rule, uncourteously. I could never plan a thing and get
it to come out the way I planned it. It came out some other way--some
way I had not counted upon.

And so I do not admire the human being--as an intellectual marvel--as
much as I did when I was young, and got him out of books, and did not
know him personally. When I used to read that such and such a general
did a certain brilliant thing, I believed it. Whereas it was not so.
Circumstance did it by help of his temperament. The circumstances would
have failed of effect with a general of another temperament: he might
see the chance, but lose the advantage by being by nature too slow or
too quick or too doubtful. Once General Grant was asked a question about
a matter which had been much debated by the public and the newspapers;
he answered the question without any hesitancy. "General, who planned
the the march through Georgia?" "The enemy!" He added that the enemy
usually makes your plans for you. He meant that the enemy by neglect or
through force of circumstances leaves an opening for you, and you see
your chance and take advantage of it.

Circumstances do the planning for us all, no doubt, by help of our
temperaments. I see no great difference between a man and a watch,
except that the man is conscious and the watch isn't, and the man TRIES
to plan things and the watch doesn't. The watch doesn't wind itself
and doesn't regulate itself--these things are done exteriorly. Outside
influences, outside circumstances, wind the MAN and regulate him. Left
to himself, he wouldn't get regulated at all, and the sort of time he
would keep would not be valuable. Some rare men are wonderful watches,
with gold case, compensation balance, and all those things, and some
men are only simple and sweet and humble Waterburys. I am a Waterbury. A
Waterbury of that kind, some say.

A nation is only an individual multiplied. It makes plans and
Circumstances comes and upsets them--or enlarges them. Some patriots
throw the tea overboard; some other patriots destroy a Bastille. The
PLANS stop there; then Circumstance comes in, quite unexpectedly, and
turns these modest riots into a revolution.

And there w