UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 



mising, and life must adapt itself to it or cease to 

 be. Man can and does alter his environment to a 

 limited extent, but not so radically as his environ- 

 ment alters him. He cannot change the air he 

 breathes, or the water he drinks, or the nature of the 

 food he eats, nor change his vital relations to the 

 physical world. His mechanical relations, to a cer- 

 tain extent, wait upon his will, but his vital rela- 

 tions are forever fixed. The place and the hour 

 leave their mark upon everything — more upon the 

 plastic and adaptive forms of life than upon the 

 rigid and immobile forms of death. If you and I had 

 been born in another month, another season, or in 

 another country than we were, can there be any 

 doubt that we should have been quite other than 

 we are? If Carlyle had come and settled here when 

 Emerson invited him, is it not almost certain that 

 his outlook upon life would have been radically 

 changed, and his literary output different? The 

 currents flow; life moulds itself to the moments as 

 they fly. The almost infinite diversities of types and 

 characters attest the influence of the chance hap- 

 penings in the environment. The plains beget one 

 type of life; the mountains, the desert, the sea, the 

 wilderness beget others. The professions and occu- 

 pations beget their types. The general type of a 

 race long adjusted to its environment — the Eng- 

 lish, the French, the Arabian, the Mongolian — 

 remains fairly constant, but inside this constancy 



256 



