Roots and Crowns 2

I have thought a good deal about trees; I like them. They speak eloquently of the balanced dubiety which I told you was the skeptical attitude. No splendid crown without the strong root that works in the dark, drawing its nourishment among the rocks, the soil, hidden waters, and all the little burrowing things. A man is like that; his splendors and his fruits are to be seen, to win him love and admiration. But what about the root?

Have you ever seen a bulldozer clearing land? It advances upon a great tree and shoves and pushes inexorably until the tree is down and thrust out of the way, and all of that effort is accompanied by a screaming and wrenching sound from the tree as the great roots are torn from the ground. It is a particularly distressing kind of death. And when the tree is upturned, the root proves to be as big as the crown.

What is the root of man? All sorts of things that nourish his visible part, but the deepest of root of all, the tap-root, is that child he once was, of which I spoke to you when I was amusing you with the story of my life. That is the root which goes deepest because it is reaching downward toward the ancestors.

The ancestors - how grand it sounds! But the root does not go back to those old stuffed shirts with white wigs whose portraits people display so proudly, but to our unseen depths - which means the messy stuff of life from which the real creation and achievement takes its nourishment.

- Robertson Davies - The Rebel Angels