UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 



descending current balanced, a perpetual explosion, 

 integration and disintegration going hand in hand. 



The effort of matter and force in the inorganic 

 world is to find a stable equilibrium; their effort in 

 the organic world is to find an unstable equilibrium, 

 to hang forever, as it were, on the pitch of the tor- 

 rent, suspended between mobility and immobility, 

 constantly passing from one to the other. Life is 

 an interchange of the two, the perpetual translation 

 and transformation of the immobile into the mobile. 

 The effort of the inorganic forces to find a stable 

 equilibrium gives us all the forms of mechanical 

 energy and shapes the surface of the globe; the ef- 

 forts of the organic to find and hold a state of un- 

 stable equilibrium give us all the forms of life. 

 Gravity rules in one. What rules in and determines 

 the other? 



One may think of Bergson's conception of a living 

 body under various images. I am reminded of it 

 when I see at the fountain a little ball dancing in the 

 air at the top of a slender column of water — the 

 upward push just balancing the downward pull of 

 gravity, and the ball playing and hovering perpetu- 

 ally. It is mobility and stability equalized. Dimin- 

 ish the force of the upward current and the ball sinks 

 and sinks till it lies motionless at the bottom. So, 

 when the pressure of life goes down, the living body 

 fails and fails, overcome by the opposite tendency, 

 till death ensues. 



216 



