H4 Evolution of Life and Form. 



else how shall it work onward to perfection ? And 

 that centre grows by struggle. All strength comes 

 by struggle of one kind or another. If you want 

 your arms to become strong, it is no good to lie on a 

 sofa and leave the muscles to grow merely by the 

 nourishment that you give them. They want more 

 than nourishment, they want exercise ; and it is the 

 law of all growth of form that the life must be 

 drawn into the form, for only then can the form ex- 

 pand and become capable of receiving a further 

 impulse of life ; if the muscles are to grow, the cells 

 that compose them must be stretched by exercise, 

 and the life must flow into the expanded cell ; 

 only then does it become capable of multiplication, 

 so that there may be many cells where before 

 there was only one. The difference between the 

 weak man and the strong man, the man who is 

 feeble and the man who is athletic, is the difference 

 brought about by exercise and struggle, by pulling 

 against resistance, by taking up a weight and 

 whirling it round and making the muscles strain 

 against the weight. That is a picture of the way 

 in which all life is working for development of form ; 

 the impulse of life leads to the exercise of the form, 

 the exercise makes it plastic and increases the form, 

 through which the life is thus enabled to flow more 

 largely. That is as true in the mental world as in 



