UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 



of the wind. The organism is built up by the same 

 chemical reactions that would pull it down; its 

 strength is the strength of the forces it has over- 

 come. Life has no capital but that which it draws 

 from the non-living. The modus operandi of this 

 drawing science may analyze and explain, but the 

 secret of life itself — that impulse which lifts this 

 wave of matter up into these myriads of living 

 forms — is beyond the reach of scientific analysis. 

 Our breathing and drinking, I have said, are on 

 the principle of the bellows, but the bellows implies 

 the man working it. So our breathing implies the 

 life-principle working the respiratory apparatus; 

 but working from within, not from without, sus- 

 taining a vital and not merely a mechanical relation 

 to it. Of this we have no parallel in our mechanical 

 contrivances. The nearest we can come to it is in 

 the electromagnetic world, where the active and 

 potent principle is inseparable from the ponderable 

 body which it animates. 



A man may repeat the type of character of his 

 father or grandfather — the main course of his life 

 may be determined by his unconscious inheritances, 

 or by his race, and the nation of which he forms 

 a part, and yet have the utmost sense of freedom, 

 because these things do not act as external or for- 

 eign forces, but form the body and substance of 

 his inmost personality; his identity is one with 



them. 



146 



