Suddenly one day, without intending to, he notices a path or opening
in the hedge, leading to right or left, and he stands, looking at the
undiscovered. After that he stops at all the openings in the hedge; one
day, with a beating heart, he tries one.

And this is where the fun begins.

Out of ten of him that try the narrow path, nine of him come back to
the broad road, and, when they pass the next gap in the hedge, they say:
"No, no, my friend, I found you pleasant for a while, but after that-ah!
after that! The way my fathers went is good enough for me, and it is
obviously the proper one; for nine of me came back, and that poor silly
tenth--I really pity him!"

And when he comes to the next inn, and snuggles in his well-warmed, bed,
he thinks of the wild waste of heather where he might have had to spend
the night alone beneath the stars; nor does it, I think, occur to him
that the broad road he treads all day was once a trackless heath itself.

But the poor silly tenth is faring on. It is a windy night that he
is travelling through a windy night, with all things new around, and
nothing to help him but his courage. Nine times out of ten that courage
fails, and he goes down into the bog. He has seen the undiscovered,
and--like Ferrand in this book--the undiscovered has engulfed him; his
spirit, tougher than the spirit of the nine that burned back to sleep
in inns, was yet not tough enough. The tenth time he wins across, and on
the traces he has left others follow slowly, cautiously--a new road is
opened to mankind! A true saying goes: Whatever is, is right! And if all
men from the world's beginning had said that, the world would never have
begun--at all. Not even the protoplasmic jelly could have commenced its