EACH FOR ITS OWN SAKE 



vast machine, amenable to the measurements and 

 calculations of the astronomers. The eclipses all 

 occur exactly on time, and the planets revolve in 

 their orbits without the untruth, as Whitman says, 

 of a single second. The disorder and disruptions 

 which occur are inside of vast fundamental laws. 

 Our mountains and seas are shaken by earthquakes, 

 and the earth's surface is swept by cyclones and the 

 seashores are devastated by tidal waves, yet these 

 things are only phases of the effort toward a fixed 

 equilibrium. The earth's surface as we now behold 

 it, the distribution of land and water, of mountain 

 and plain, the procession of the seasons, our whole 

 weather system, the friendly and the unfriendly 

 forces, are all the outcome of this clash and stress 

 of the physical forces, which make a paradise of 

 some places and the opposite of others. 



When we look upon the living world as revealed 

 in the geologic record, we still see a kind of welter 

 and chaos, but we also see the advent of new prin- 

 ciples not entirely subject to mechanical and mathe- 

 matical laws. Life goes its way and takes liberties 

 with its physical environment. Living bodies change 

 and develop as the non-living do not. The various 

 organic forms "rise on stepping-stones of their dead 

 selves," and incalculably slow transformations of 

 lower forms into higher take place, but not without 

 appalling delays and waste and suffering. Chemical 

 and mechanical laws are still in full force, but they 



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