"if you give them time"

I remembered this quote yesterday, by William James:

I am against bigness and greatness in all their forms, and with the invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, stealing in through the crannies of the world like so many soft rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, and yet rending the hardest monuments of man’s pride, if you give them time. The bigger the unit you deal with, the hollower, the more brutal, the more mendacious is the life displayed. So I am against all big organizations as such, national ones first and foremost; against all big successes and big results; and in favor of the eternal forces of truth which always work in the individual and immediately unsuccessful way, under-dogs always, till history comes, after they are long dead, and puts them on top.

I like how it emphasizes the patience required to see the effects of the molecular moral forces, the "soft rootlets" of God. Made me think of what I wrote recently about endurance and faith. We can't bring ourselves into harmony with these slow-working forces if we insist on seeing immediate results. But this is God's way, the way we see demonstrated so clearly in all of the natural world, and the way of love: slow, patient, but insistent and ultimately irresistible.

Also, it seems to me that the the poor and weak and old can understand this way better and embrace it more readily. The strong see no reason to wait.