indeed nearly destroyed it; but wherever a bud survived, there its
true office in nature was asserted, its ancient kind declared, its
growth stubbornly resumed.

The moment for the lad may have been one of those in the
development of the young when they suddenly behold familiar objects
as with eyes more clearly opened; when the neutral becomes the
decisive; when the sermon is found in the stone. As he now took
curious cognizance of the budding wood which he, seeing it only in
winter, had supposed could not bud again, he fell to marvelling how
constant each separate thing in nature is to its own life and how
sole is its obligation to live that life only. All that a locust
had to do in the world was to be a locust; and be a locust it would
though it perished in the attempt. It drew back with no hesitation,
was racked with no doubt, puzzled with no necessity of preference.
It knew absolutely the law of its own being and knew absolutely
nothing else; found under that law its liberty, found under that
liberty its life.

"But I," he reflected, "am that which was never sown and never
grown before. All the ages of time, all the generations of men,
have not fixed any type of life for me. What I am to become I must
myself each instant choose; and having chosen, I can never know
that I have chosen best. Often I do know that what I have selected
I must discard. And yet no one choice can ever be replaced by its
rejected fellow; the better chance lost once, is lost eternally.
Within the limits of a locust, how little may the individual
wander; within the limits of the wide and erring human, what may
not a man become! What now am I becoming? What shall I now choose--
as my second choice?"