THE SUMMIT OF THE YEARS 



The only analogue of these things I now think of 

 in nature about us is afforded by a swarm of bees, 

 wherein all the complex economies of the hive are 

 carried on without a single or separate seat of author- 

 ity in the hive. Maeterlinck aptly calls this invisible 

 authority the "spirit of the hive" a name for 

 something that we know not of. So one may say, 

 the spirit of the body, or the spirit of the tree, deter- 

 mines and controls all its complex economies, and 

 makes of it a unit. 



The cells that are the architects of one man's body 

 cannot be distinguished from the cells that build 

 another man's body, yet behold the difference 

 between the two men in size, disposition, brain- 

 power! It looks as if there were something in the 

 man that is not of his cells. 



Indeed, the mystery of the cell has never been 

 penetrated. A man, like every other animal, begins 

 in a speck of nucleated protoplasm so small that 

 it seems to be almost at the vanishing point; yet in 

 that microscopical entity there may slumber a 

 Shakespeare, a Newton, a Darwin, a Lincoln, with 

 all the complex inheritance of race and of family 

 traits, and with all the wondrous individual endow- 

 ments of mental powers. 



That cell, invisible to the naked eye, is a world in 



itself. It divides and subdivides, and its progeny, 



apparently of their own motion, begin to organize 



the human body and to build it up, as I have said. 



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