ACCEPTING THE UNIVERSE 



for moisture and sustenance from the soil, and for 

 a place in the sun, as men do in the community, and 

 the most lucky, or the most fit, survive. Nature 

 plans for a perfect tree as she plans for a perfect 

 man, but both tree and man have to take their 

 chances with hostile forces and conditions amid 

 which their lot falls, so that an absolutely perfect 

 oak or elm or pine is about as rare as a perfect man. 

 Of course Nature has endowed man with mental 

 and spiritual powers which she has not bestowed 

 upon trees. These powers give man an advantage 

 over trees, but not the same advantage over men — 

 his own kind of tree — because his fellows are simi- 

 larly endowed. His struggle with his own kind is as 

 inevitable as the struggle of trees with their kind, 

 with this advantage in favor of the trees : theirs is al- 

 ways a peaceful competition, it never takes the form 

 of destructive wars. Trees of opposite kinds will 

 draw away from one another; a pine will draw away 

 from a maple or an oak, not, I suppose, because of 

 any natural antagonism, but because it is less mo- 

 bile and its tender but more rigid branches cannot 

 stand the buffetings of the more mobile and flexible 

 deciduous trees. Pine loves to associate with pine, 

 and spruce with spruce. The spirit, the atmosphere 

 of a pine or a hemlock forest, how different from 

 that of a beech or a maple ! Most trees tend to asso- 

 ciate themselves together in large bodies, as did 

 primitive man, and civilized man, too, for that mat- 



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