ACCEPTING THE UNIVERSE 



triumph. Life in all its forms is a warfare only in the 

 sense that it is a struggle with its outward condi- 

 tions, in which, other things being equal, the strong- 

 est force prevails. Small and weak forms prevail 

 also, because the competing forms are small and 

 weak, or because at the feast of life there is a place 

 for the small and weak also. But lion against lion, 

 man against man, mouse against mouse, the strong- 

 est will, in the end, be the victor. 



Man's effort is to save waste, to reduce friction, to 

 take short cuts, to make smooth the way, to seize 

 the advantage, to economize time, but the physical 

 forces know none of these things. 



Go into the woods and behold the evil the trees 

 have to contend with — all typical of the evil we 

 have to contend with — too crowded in places, one 

 tree crushing another by its fall, specimens on every 

 hand whose term of life might be lengthened by a 

 little wise surgery; borers, blight, disease, insect 

 pests, storm, wreckage, thunderbolt scars, or de- 

 struction — evil in a hundred forms besetting every 

 tree, and sooner or later leaving its mark. A few 

 escape — oaks, maples, pines, elms — and reach a 

 greater age than the others, but they fail at last, and 

 when they have rounded out their green century, or 

 ten centuries, and go down in a gale, or in the still- 

 ness of a summer night, how often younger trees are 

 marred or crushed by their fall ! But come back after 

 many long years, and their places are filled, and all 



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