UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 



explain a rainbow, but not a rabbit." We can pro- 

 duce a rainbow at will, but only rabbits can produce 

 rabbits. Yet Professor Soddy seems to think it is 

 not improbable that the time will come when the 

 chemist will be "able to synthesize foodstuffs apart 

 from the life-process." If he means directly from 

 the inorganic elements, I do not see why it would 

 not be as easy to synthesize a rabbit as to synthesize 

 a peach, or a kernel of wheat, or a beefsteak, or an 

 egg, "apart from the life -process." 

 / Fate and freedom play with or against each other 

 in all living things ; there is fate in the material con- 

 ditions of life, and freedom in life itself; their inter- 

 action opens the door to chance; freedom of choice 

 in us makes all our mistakes and failures possible. 

 Life is plastic, fluid, a flowing metamorphosis, ever 

 and never the same. 



When the wind snatched my hat off my head the 

 other day, and carried it down the street amid a 

 cloud of dust and dry leaves, whisking it across to 

 the other side and between the feet of a colored man 

 bearing a big bundle of excelsior on his shoulders, 

 the hat was completely in the grip of the fateful 

 material forces. But the colored man who seized it 

 and held it was force of another kind. The wind 

 might have carried him away also had it been 

 stronger, but he would at least have struggled and 

 opposed his strength to it. And it is in this that the 

 freedom of life consists — freedom to struggle, to 



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