Moving the Mountain

Preface

One of the most distinctive features of the human mind is to forecast better things.

“We look before and after
And pine for what is not.”

This natural tendency to hope, desire, foresee and then, if possible, obtain, has been largely diverted from human usefulness since our goal was placed after death, in Heaven. With all our hope in “another world,” we have largely lost hope of this one.

Some minds, still keen in the perception of better human possibilities, have tried to write out their vision and give it to the world. From Plato’s ideal Republic to Wells’ Day of the Comet we have had many utopias set before us, best known of which are that of Sir Thomas More and the great modern instance, Looking Backward.

All these have one or two distinctive features—an element of extreme remoteness, or the introduction of some mysterious outside force. Moving the Mountain is a short distance utopia, a baby utopia, a little one that can grow. It involves no other change than a change of mind, the mere awakening of people, especially the women, to existing possibilities. It indicates what people might do, real people, now living, in thirty years—if they would.

One man, truly aroused and redirecting his energies, can change his whole life in thirty years.

So can the world.

I

On a gray, cold, soggy Tibetan plateau stood glaring at one another two white people—a man and a woman.

With the first, a group of peasants; with the second, the guides and carriers of a well-equipped exploring party.

The man wore the dress of a peasant, but around him was a leather belt—old, worn, battered—but a recognizable belt of no Asiatic pattern, and showing a heavy buckle made in twisted initials.

The woman’s eye had caught the sunlight on this buckle before she saw that the heavily bearded face under the hood was white. She pressed forward to look at it.

“Where did you get that belt?” she cried, turning for the interpreter to urge her question.

The man had caught her voice, her words. He threw back his hood and looked at her, with a strange blank look, as of one listening to something far away.

“John!” she cried. “John! My brother!”

He lifted a groping hand to his head, made a confused noise that ended in almost a shout of “Nellie!” reeled and fell backward.

When one loses his mind, as it were, for thirty years, and finds it again; when one wakes up; comes to life; recognizes oneself an American citizen twenty-five years old—

No. This is what I find it so hard to realize. I am not twenty-five; I am fifty-five.

Well, as I was saying, when one comes to life again like this, and has to renew acquaintance with one’s own mind, in a sudden swarming rush of hurrying memories—that is a good deal of pressure for a brain so long unused.

But when on top of that, one is pushed headlong into a world immeasurably different from the world one has left at twenty-five—a topsy-turvy world, wherein all one’s most cherished ideals are found to be reversed, rearranged, or utterly gone; where strange new facts are accompanied by strange new thoughts and strange new feelings—the pressure becomes terrific.

Nellie has suggested that I write it down, and I think for once she is right. I disagree with her on so many points that I am glad to recognize the wisdom of this idea. It will certainly be a useful process in my reeducation; and relieve the mental tension.

So, to begin with my first life, being now in my third—

I am the only son of a Methodist minister of South Carolina. My mother was a Yankee. She died after my sister Ellen was born, when I was seven years old. My father educated me well. I was sent to a small Southern college, and showed such a talent for philology that I specialized in ancient languages, and, after some teaching and the taking of various degrees, I had a wonderful opportunity to join an expedition into India and Tibet. I was eager for a sight of those venerable races, those hoary scriptures, those time-honored customs.

We were traveling through the Himalayas—and the last thing I remember was a night camp, and a six-months-old newspaper from home. We had rejoicingly obtained it from a party we met in the pass.

It was read and reread by all of us—even the advertisements—even the editorials, and in one of these I learned that Mrs. Eddy had been dead some time and that another religion had burst forth and was sweeping the country, madly taken up by the women. That was my last news item.

I suppose it was this reading, and the discussions we had, that made me walk in my sleep that night. That is the only explanation I can give. I know I lay down just as I was—and that’s all I know, until Nellie found me.

The party reported me lost. They searched for days, made what inquiry they could. No faintest clue was ever found. Himalayan precipices are very tall, and very sudden.

My sister Nellie was traveling in Tibet and found me, with a party of peasants. She gathered what she could from them, through interpreters.

It seems that I fell among those people—literally; bruised, stunned, broken, but not dead. Some merciful—or shall I say unmerciful?—trees had softened the fall and let me down easy, comparatively speaking.

They were good people—Buddhists. They mended my bones and cared for me, and it appears made me quite a chief man, in course of time, in their tiny village. But their little valley was so remote and unknown, so out of touch with any and everything, that no tale of this dumb white man ever reached Western ears. I was dumb until I learned their language, was “as a child of a day,” they said—knew absolutely nothing.

They taught me what they knew. I suppose I turned a prayer mill; I suppose I was married—Nellie didn’t ask that, and they never mentioned such a detail. Furthermore, they gave so dim an account of where the place was that we don’t know now; should have to locate that night’s encampment, and then look for a precipice and go down it with ropes.

As I have no longer any interest in those venerable races and time-honored customs, I think we will not do this.

Well, she found me, and something happened. She says I knew her—shouted “Nellie!” and fell down—fell on a stone, too, and hit my head so hard they thought I was dead this time “for sure.” But when I “came to” I came all the way, back to where I was thirty years ago; and as for those thirty years—I do not remember one day of them.