Our Children's World

A flower seller wrote: "One day three boys came to me, not one of them past his tenth year. The first took off his cap and addressed me politely, saying: We need a bouquet of yellow flowers! I showed them some yellow flowers, but they asked for a better kind. I asked them: must the color be yellow? They said: Our companion loved the color yellow — he always wore a yellow shirt, and now we want to adorn his grave with yellow roses!... The boys spoke while tears all but choked them, and the lump stood in their throats. So I gathered a bouquet of yellow roses and presented it to them, my heart full of admiration for their noble, innocent feeling."

I read this incident and felt something steal into my soul — something other than admiration for the children and for their lofty feeling; something like relief. For my soul had discovered a company of people whom the world may sweep along in its clamorous current, and whose hearts it may try to turn to stone with its harsh events — but these hearts will remain tender, filled with noble mercy.

I asked myself: were these little ones created so, or did they grow up in the care of humane mothers, who searched out the roots of mercy in their souls and watered them and tended them until they grew? And I remembered a gracious lady who used to go out with her little daughter on her daily walk. The little girl would go skipping along, laughing; and whenever she and her mother passed a person with an infirmity, or a hospital, the mother would whisper with respect and feeling: Poor souls — if only we could do something for them! Whereupon the little one would stop and pull the silver piaster from her pocket, and then try to break it in two, to give the wretched man half of it! The mother would solve the problem, and after that the little one insisted on taking her piaster in two halves, in case she should need it. Had the mother not drawn her attention, she would have passed by without heeding the matter, and inattention would gradually have turned into indifference...

In the depths of our souls, in that sea of tossing gulfs within us, many of our feelings settle to the bottom while we are small — feelings whose essence and whose kind we do not fully grasp... And the events of the world have proved that the good in our souls may lie hidden long, until environment and circumstance and the gentle touch bring it forth; just as evil may lie hidden long, until environment and circumstance and the harsh touch bring it forth. And either feeling may wilt and die, if wakening circumstances do not tend it.

And man — the human — who was it that first called him by this name? Or rather, who was it that drew out its derivatives, so that they became humanity, humane, humans, a human soul, and all the rest...? All that matters to us in this, and all that this petrified society of ours requires, is that there should exist in the world humans who love — not mere mortals who live...

This child in his cradle plays with the cat, tugging it by its ear or its tail; he does not know that in his hands is a creature that feels... These youngsters took the cat and hung it up with a rope and strangled it, after making it taste the bitterness of torment, laughing all the while; whence came this cruelty upon them, with no one to soften its edge — a cruelty that may pave the way to crime? These boys see the simpleton and chase after him and pelt him with stones; they see the blind man and do not take his hand to see him across the street; in both cases they are mere mortals, not humans... This bird is snatched from its nest, and its chicks go on cheeping with hunger until they die... This coarse feeling shows itself in our children in our homes:

They strike the servants; they show no tenderness toward the old and the sick among us; they meet our overflowing affection with coldness. Who accustomed them to take and not give — or to take much and give little?...

The world today is turning to stone. I remember, in our childhood, a young man who fell slain in a neighboring village; the town was shaken, and its crowds streamed forth to offer condolence, then came back with gloom hanging over them, and went about recounting the tragedy in all its details: from the pool of the departed young man's blood, to his mare standing beside him weeping, to the grief of his two aged parents — talk that spread a shadow of gloom over the people, and covered them for weeks... Why then are our feelings hardened today? Why do the newspapers and the wireless bring us every day the news of dozens of tragedies, and we forget them within minutes, as though they had never been?

Was there, in the din of the city, in the race after the mouthful by day and after pleasure by night, something to distract us? Then wretched be the mouthful and the pleasure!... Was it because of the sheer abundance of what we hear — the world having become one, and science having risen so high that it brings us every day the news of tragedies — that the thing has become ordinary with us...? Wretched be science, if in it the good deed is mingled with the evil... Was it because the woman has been drawn away from her child, so that he found no one at his side to stir his stagnant feelings...? How ill, then, the mother has done!...

And now, come, let us strip the world of its humane ones — of its angels of mercy, of those who were kneaded of a clay whose name is sacrifice... Come, strip the world of them: what then remains to it?... Take away Pasteur, and Pasteur's institute and mercy and goodness... Take away Nightingale, her lamp and her sacrifice... Take away Lincoln, dying for the liberation of the slaves... Take away the discoverers of the protective serum — one of them trying it on his own body, or plunging the needle, the needle of which he knows not whether it carries death or life, into the body of his own child, to test it and to offer the world a certain cure... Oh, how magnificent is man when he grows great! And how magnificent is humanity — for where it exists, there exist with it sacrifice and mercy and the deepest signs of self-devotion!

Then there are these gathered efforts — these societies: the societies for the lepers, and the blind, and the foundlings, and the orphans, and the hospitals, to which flowers and newspapers are sent by unknown hands. Strip the world of these touches of mercy, and see what remains to it: commerce...? matter...? a destroying science...? How paltry the world would be!...

Madam, you may be a learned and great mother; but no greatness that is not built on foundations of humanity can be counted great! You may raise your child in a patriotic, courageous upbringing — but do not forget that the noblest thing a soldier does is to care for a wounded enemy! And you may prepare him to become a famous doctor, or a lawyer, or a politician — but remember to prepare him to be a doctor who is a human being, not a doctor-tradesman; a lawyer who is a human being, not a lawyer-usurer; and a politician who is a human being, not a politician and nothing more...

Have mercy on this society, madam, and deal gently with this world that is near to bursting — because science is marching far away from mercy!