ioned to
produce the cardinal result; it is not any more important than the
humblest of its ten thousand predecessors. Each of the ten thousand did
its appointed share, on its appointed date, in forwarding the scheme,
and they were all necessary; to have left out any one of them would have
defeated the scheme and brought about SOME OTHER result. It know we have
a fashion of saying "such and such an event was the turning-point in my
life," but we shouldn't say it. We should merely grant that its place
as LAST link in the chain makes it the most CONSPICUOUS link; in real
importance it has no advantage over any one of its predecessors.

Perhaps the most celebrated turning-point recorded in history was the
crossing of the Rubicon. Suetonius says:

Coming up with his troops on the banks of the Rubicon, he halted for a
while, and, revolving in his mind the importance of the step he was
on the point of taking, he turned to those about him and said, "We may
still retreat; but if we pass this little bridge, nothing is left for us
but to fight it out in arms."

This was a stupendously important moment. And all the incidents, big and
little, of Caesar's previous life had been leading up to it, stage by
stage, link by link. This was the LAST link--merely the last one, and no
bigger than the others; but as we gaze back at it through the inflating
mists of our imagination, it looks as big as the orbit of Neptune.

You, the reader, have a PERSONAL interest in that link, and so have
I; so has the rest of the human race. It was one of the links in your
life-chain, and it was one of the links in mine. We may wait, now, with
bated breath, while Caesar reflects. Your fate and mine are involved in
his decision.

While he was thus hesitating, the following incident occurred. A person
remarked for his noble mien and graceful aspect appeared close at hand,
sitting and playing upon a pipe. When not only the shepherds, but a
number of soldiers also, flocked to listen to him, and some trumpeters
among them, he snatched a trumpet from one of them, ran to the river
with it, and, sounding the advance with a piercing blast, crossed to the
other side. Upon this, Caesar exclaimed: "Let us go whither the omens of
the gods and the iniquity of our enemies call us. THE DIE IS CAST."

So he crossed--and changed the future of the whole human race, for all
time. But that stranger was a link in Caesar's life-chain, too; and a
necessary one. We don't know