13 March: Boreham on the Four Elements

Life's Insurgent Forces
Although the meteorologists do not share the popular impression, we commonly think of the wind as being particularly violent at this equinoctial season. To most of us, the wind represents the essence of lawlessness. Rebellious and anarchic, it recognises no authority but the authority of its own caprice. If, before some august Court having jurisdiction over such matters, the wind were charged with the vandalism and sabotage that we usually ascribe to it, the first thing that would impress the judges would be the fact that, like so many suspicious characters, the accused is known by many names. Some call it the Storm, others the Tempest, whilst still others refer to it as the Hurricane, the Sirocco, the Tornado, the Gale, the Blizzard, the Simoom; his aliases are legion. But, by whatever name he is called, it is agreed that he wields enormous power and that it is a power ungoverned by principle and untouched by pity. Among the myriad witnesses prepared to bear testimony against him, the four elements—Earth, Air, Sea, and Fire—figure conspicuously.

The Earth complains that the wind uproots her tallest trees and scatters the petals of her fairest flowers. One day he sweeps across the desert, scorching and suffocating any travellers he may happen to find there; and then, when he emerges from those burning sands, and comes upon some more temperate zone, his breath is like the blast of a furnace and everything wilts and shrivels before him. The next day he comes blustering up from the realms of everlasting snow, and people are bitten by the teeth of the blizzard.

The Case For The Prosecution
The second witness, the Air, declares that she is scarcely mistress in her own house. All the world over, she is kept in a state of constant agitation. Even when there come moments of delicious repose, they prove to be but the calm before the storm; and all her tranquillity is soon changed to tumult. The third witness, the Sea, maintains that she suffers most of all. The wind, she avers, lashes her waves into fury, destroying everything and everybody confided to her care. Every shore is littered with the wreckage of brave ships, whilst the ocean bed is smothered with the hulls of fine vessels and the bones of dauntless people. It matters not to the wind whether the ships are good ships or bad ships. Pirates or pioneers, missionaries or buccaneers; he makes no distinction.

The fourth witness, the Fire, argues that, in a way, she is the worst treated of all. The wind, she alleges, turns all her virtues into vices, her good into evil. If she lights a young child's candle, he blows it out and leaves the little one in peril in the darkness. If she lights a fire at which some exhausted wayfarer may warm his hands and broil his food, the prisoner blows upon it and sends the flames roaring through the forest, burning down stacks and stables and happy homesteads and spreading ruin and devastation everywhere. She fears, she explains, to start a single genial flame for fear that he will make it the instrument by which he will burn up a prairie or turn a prosperous city into a charred heap of smouldering ashes. Viewing the matter from these four points of view, the case against the wind seems unanswerable. Is there nothing to be said in his defence?

Counsel For The Defence
There is. The wind has a noble record to his credit. In the old days, when ships relied on sails, every mariner knew the horror of being becalmed. To lie motionless day after day on some oily equatorial sea, the water as smooth as glass, supplies running low, and all the activities of life paralysed! Every captain loathed a windless world. The winds were his friends; he could not move without them. The exploits of Columbus and Cook, Raleigh and Drake, Nelson and Grenville would have been impossible but for the wind. And what of the Trade winds? All writers on maritime affairs dilate on the enormous influence that these stupendous forces, in perpetual and reliable motion, have exercised on the evolution of human history. Scientists, too, eulogise the way in which the heat of the tropics and the rigours of the frigid climes are alike tempered by the kindly activities of the winds; and the naturalists are no less eager to pay their tribute. It is all very well, they say, for us to rail against the storm. The storm may render life at sea uncomfortable or even dangerous. But the wind is not primarily concerned with sailors. Ships are artificial contrivances that men entrust to the waves at their own risk. The wind thinks, not of ships, but of fish. Frank Buckland, the famous Inspector of Fisheries, says that the stormy seasons are the delight of many of the creatures that live in salt water; the thunder of the breakers is, he says, the grandest music that they ever hear.

Doctors, too, often speak of the cleansing ministry of the winds. They stir up the dust, it is true, and hurl the microbes in our faces. But the broom acts very similarly, and, on the whole, we regard the broom as an implement that makes for cleanliness. It may be that the apparent lawlessness of the wind is part of the camouflage of Nature. In his "Life of Johnson," Boswell tells of the visit to Lord Melcombe's home of Dr. Young, the author of "Night Thoughts." One evening the guest had to fight his way back to the house through a terrific storm. "What a night!" exclaimed Lord Melcombe, in welcoming him at the door. "A great night!" replied the doctor, "the Lord is abroad!" It was a poet's way of saying that the wind is not as anarchic or uncontrolled as it sometimes seems. One of the most telling passages in the New Testament reveals the astonishment of a cluster of fishermen on discovering that an authority exists that the winds and the waves recognise and obey.

F W Boreham

Image: The Four Elements