Autobiography of Mark Twain (49 page)

the judge’s gift of sorting and weighing evidence
and
finally, something recognisable as more than a mere trace of the statesman’s gift of
undcrstanding
_^
grasping
_^
a political situation and how to make profitable use of such opportunities as it offers
;w
e can comprehend
how she could be born with
_^
that
_^
these great qualities
but we cannot comprehend
_^
might exist in Jeanne d’Arc at her birth, but
_^
how they became
immediately usable
_^
instantly available
_^
and effective without the developing forces of a sympathetic
atmosphere
_^
environment
_^
and the training which comes of teaching, study, practice—years of practice—
and
_^
no less than by
_^
the crowning help of a thousand mistakes
_^
is beyond our understanding.
_^
We
can understand how
_^
know
_^
the possibilities of the future perfect peach
are
_^
to be
_^
all lying
hid
_^
dormant
_^
in the humble bitter-almond
,but
we cannot conceive of the peach springing direct
ly
from the almond without the intervening long seasons of patient cultivation and development. Out of a cattle-pasturing peasant village lost in the remotenesses of an unvisited wilderness and atrophied with ages of stupefaction and ignorance we
cannot
_^
failto
_^
see a
Joan of
_^
Jeanne d’
_^
Arc
issue
_^
issuing
_^
equipped to the last detail for her amazing career
and hope to be able
_^
nor can we hope
_^
to explain the riddle of it, labour at it as we may.

2 “comprehends.”

3. It is beyond us. All
the
_^
our
_^
rules fail in this girl’s case. In the world’s history she stands alone—
quite
_^
absolutely
_^
alone. Others have
been great
_^
shone
_^
in their first
_^
great
_^
public exhibitions of generalship, valour, legal talent, diplomacy, fortitude, but
always
their previous years and associations had
_^
invariably
_^
been in a
larger or smaller
_^
greater or less
_^
degree a preparation for
these
_^
such
_^
things. There have been no exceptions to the rule
.But Joan
_^
Yet Jeanne
_^
was competent in a law case at sixteen without ever having seen a law book
or a court house before; she
had
had no training in soldiership and no associations with it, yet she was a competent general
in
_^
on
_^
her first campaign; she was brave in her first battle, yet her courage had
had
_^
received
_^
no education—not even the education which a boy’s courage
gets from
_^
obtains through
_^
never-ceasing reminders that it is not permissible in a boy to be a coward
but only in agirl; friendless, a
lone,
ignorant
_^
unaided
_^
, in the
blossom
_^
bloom
_^
of her youth she sat week after week, a prisoner in chains, before
her
_^
an
_^
assemblage of judges
enemies hunting her to her death, the ablest minds in France
and answered
_^
answering
_^
them out of an untaught wisdom
which
_^
that
_^
overmatched their learning, baffled their tricks and treacheries with a native sagacity
which
_^
that
_^
compelled their wonder, and scored
every
_^
each
_^
day a victory against
these
incredible odds
and camped unchallenged on the field.
In the history of the human intellect, untrained, inexperienced, and using only its birthright equipment of untried capacities, there is nothing which approaches this.
Joan of
_^
Jeanne d’
_^
Arc stands alone, and must continue to stand alone, by reason of the
unfellowcd
_^
unique
_^
fact that in the things wherein she was great she was so without shade or suggestion of help from preparatory teaching, practice, environment, or experience. There is no one
_^
with whom
_^
to compare her