EACH FOR ITS OWN SAKE 



less other worlds and systems upon which it has had 

 its day and gone out forever. Life is but an incident 

 in the total scheme of things. 



To ask what this or that is for, with reference to 

 ourselves, and to conclude that some one or some- 

 thing has blundered if it is not of positive use to us, 

 is, let me repeat, to see and to think as a child. We 

 know what the hooks on the burdock and the stick- 

 seed are for, and what the wings on the maple and 

 the ash-seed are for, but do we know what the stings 

 on the nettle, or the spines on the blackberry or on 

 the thorn-apple tree are for? The cattle eat the 

 nettle, the birds eat the berries, and the wild crea- 

 tures eat the thorn-apple. How could their seeds 

 get sown if the prickles and thorns defended them 

 against wild life? Spines and thorns seem expressive 

 of moods or conditions in Nature, and to be quite 

 independent of use, as we understand the term. 



Nature's ways are so unlike our ways! Her sys- 

 tem of economics would soon bring us to bank- 

 ruptcy. She has no rival, no competitor, no single 

 end in view, no more need to store up wealth than 

 to scatter it. One form gains what another form 

 loses. Humanly speaking, she is always trying to de- 

 feat herself. The potato-bug, if left alone, would ex- 

 terminate the potato and so exterminate itself; the 

 currant-worm would exterminate the currant; the 

 forest worms would exterminate the forests, did not 

 parasites appear and check these ravages. Nature 



35 



