88 THE LAWS OF SOCIAL INEQUALITY 



can be traced through the successive annual layers down to 

 these original points. This is the cause of those knots which 

 we find in firs and other wood. They are in fact sections 

 across a portion of the branches, which proceed from the 

 interior of the stem, laterally and outwardly. The diagram on 

 page 59, if carefully studied awhile, will also make this fact 

 plain. 



But the abundant supply of food existing in the cells of the 

 cambium region of the healthy trunks of trees which have 

 been pollarded, will also stimulate to "unusual activity the 

 cambium cells;" and if there is no wake visible on dissec- 

 tion, it may be decided that the branches have been developed 

 from buds which have originated there, as " vents for the extra- 

 ordinary vital energy of the plant."* 



In society, as in a tree, there is a vast amount of dormant 

 ability, which would manifest itself if circumstances were 

 favorable. So, when a nation is decimated by disease, or 

 depopulated by war, its arts and sciences revive, its poets and 

 philosophers, its statesmen and heroes, are all reproduced. 

 Dormant talent is developed to replace that which has been 

 removed. Men who would have passed through life without 

 notice, fulfilling its ordinary routine of duties in their several 

 callings and professions, become suddenly stimulated to exert 

 themselves. The conditions have become more favorable for 

 their development; their intellectual and moral energies are 

 called forth by the new circumstances in which they find them- 

 selves placed, and they prove themselves equal to the per- 

 formance of the several tasks which have been allotted to them. 

 Their talents are as conspicuous and as highly honored by the 

 community, as those of their predecessors, by the remembrance 

 of whose deeds they are stimulated. Thus death becomes the 

 source of life nations revive again. 



Owing to the imperfect state of our present civilization, the 

 intellectual and moral powers of our nature are unfolded only 

 in a few of our fellow-men, and these few, pre-eminent for high 

 station and brilliant attainments, are being all the time brought 



* Henfey's Elementary Course of Botany, page 578. 



