CASTING BREAD UPON THE WATERS 185 



scientific aspects of this abnegation. One must learn to love the 

 truth, irrespective of its use and application — whether it be prof- 

 itable or not, pleasant or not, encouraging or the opposite. One 

 must forget oneself completely in the presence of and search for 

 truth, and love it in advance whatever it may be. Then only can 

 one find it. This is the main lesson of science. Just as soon as we, 

 as a people, are able to understand it, we shall be truly scientific- 

 minded, and then social justice will be easy enough to accomplish. 

 It is a magnificent prospect, but we have still a long way to go : 

 indeed some of us have just started, and most of us not yet. 



Of course our real goal is even more distant, for truth and 

 justice, however necessary, are not sufficient. The purest and 

 sweetest flower of the human heart is charity. In the last analysis 

 there can be no greatness in the human order (as opposed to the 

 order of nature) without magnanimity. 



It is surprising that a seed sown in Texel should blossom in 

 Jamaica, for it would be difficult to find two more completely dif- 

 ferent islands. One is a mere sandbar at the edge of a cold and 

 foggy sea, with but few trees to adorn its bleakness, while the 

 other is set like a jewel in the middle of the Caribbean Sea, its 

 innumerable hills and dales covered with luxuriant vegetation of 

 every clime and kind: pimento trees lending to the landscape a 

 touch of classical beauty, bamboo groves suggesting all the graces 

 of Asia, and other trees and shrubs without number. Yet this was 

 my strange experience: I understood fully only in Jamaica what 

 had been hinted to me in Texel many years before. The strange- 

 ness lies merely in the remoteness of the places, otherwise the ex- 

 perience is very common. Indeed it is one of the rules of life. 

 Farmers may complain of the uncertainty of their harvests, but 

 this is regularity itself as compared with the capricious ingather- 

 ing of spiritual crops. Ideas do germinate but nobody can ever 

 foretell when and where. Cast your bread upon the face of the 

 waters, fling the seed — and I do not say that you will reap (why 

 should you?) but there will be a harvest. One must be prepared 



