ACCEPTING THE UNIVERSE 



reason which she has bestowed upon man, together 

 with the sense of justice and of mercy, the moral 

 consciousness, the aesthetic perceptions, the capac- 

 ity for learning her secrets and mastering her 

 forces, are puzzling questions. We may say that 

 man achieved these things himself; but who or 

 what made him capable of achieving them, what 

 made him man, and out of the same elements that 

 his dog or his horse is made? 



Nature does not reason; she has no moral con- 

 sciousness; she does not economize her resources; 

 she is not efficient, she is wasteful and dilatory, and 

 spends with one hand what she saves with the other. 

 She is blind; her method is the hit-and-miss method 

 of a man who fights in the dark. She hits her mark, 

 not because she aims at it, but because she shoots in 

 all directions. She fills the air with her bullets. She 

 wants to plant in yonder marsh her cat-tail flag, or 

 her purple loosestrife, and she trusts her seeds to 

 every wind that blows, and to the foot of every 

 bird that visits her marshes, no matter which way 

 they are going. And in time her marsh gets planted. 

 The pollen from her trees and plants drifts in clouds 

 in order that one minute grain of it may find the 

 pistil that is waiting for it somewhere in the next 

 wood or field. She trusts her nuts to every vaga- 

 bond jay or crow or squirrel that comes along, in 

 hopes that some of them will be dropped or hidden 

 and thus get planted. She trims her trees, and thins 



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