THE NEW EARTH 



he cares for his grains and his fruits, he can 

 nurture and control and educate his higher 

 faculties, just as he can, by exhaustive breeding 

 and selection and combination, lead the plant 

 life about him to higher planes, augment it, 

 ennoble it, improve it, enormously multiply it. 

 But beyond all this, beyond his life, lies his 

 life. He stands before his life as he does 

 before the protoplasm cell which he may see 

 under the microscope, or as he stands before 

 the life which has been brought up from the 

 abyssal depths of the sea, and watches it as it 

 reproduces itself; but between this protoplasm 

 and between this act of re-creation and life 

 itself lies a gulf as wide as eternity, — a gulf 

 upon which no man may even so much as 

 raise anchor while earth life lasts, but which, 

 through all the centuries since man and the 

 plants came upon earth, he has been crossing 

 under the white sails of an immortal hope. 



82 



