UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 



inevitable. Is life inevitable in the same sense? Was 

 it predetermined in the constitution of matter and 

 its laws? One cannot say that the profile in the rocks 

 was predetermined in this sense — only the possi- 

 bility of it. The conjunction of circumstances that 

 gave life to the globe, the mechanists would say was 

 a matter of chance; this specific conjunction might 

 never have happened, or might have been vastly 

 delayed, or accelerated, as maybe it was. But the 

 law of probability would sooner or later have 

 brought it about. The law of probability will in 

 time, or in eternity, throw our earth into the arms 

 of a comet, and our sun against another sun coursing 

 in space. If celestial bodies collide once, then they 

 will collide twice, and thrice, and ten thousand 

 times; so if the conjunction of matter that resulted 

 in life happened once, it will happen again, and may 

 have happened any number of times in the past 

 history of the cosmos. 



It is quite certain that there could have been no 

 man and none of the higher forms of vertebrate life, 

 had not the land risen above the sea. There is 

 enough water on the globe to cover all the land- 

 areas at a depth of two miles. With the continents 

 thus submerged, of course the present forms of ter- 

 restrial life could not have developed, and if we look 

 upon this elevation of the land above the sea as a 

 matter of chance, — the result of the hit-and-miss 

 warring of the purely mechanical forces, — then is 



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