UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 



a goal, but is delayed i"n reaching it, and, further- 

 more, that the goal is not an end in itself. The Eter- 

 nal seems to indulge creative energy just as an 

 artist does for the sake of self-expression — the 

 joy of creation. The cosmic energy seems to have 

 no other end than this. It fills the world with life 

 just to see it struggle and develop. The earth is 

 a canvas of living pigments, or a page of living 

 words, or a score of living chords, and the picture 

 or the poem or the symphony is for the joy of self- 

 activity. The picture is in high lights and low 

 lights, it is shaded with suffering and pain and fail- 

 ure; the poem halts and is full of dull and prosaic 

 as well as of lyric passages; the symphony is full 

 of discords as well as of harmonies. 



Ill 



Nothing is plainer, I think, than that forms of 

 life of the same species begin life with different 

 degrees of vitality, whatever that may be. Of a 

 thousand spears of corn in May, some will stand 

 a frost better than others; nine hundred may be 

 killed and one hundred may live. The same is true 

 of many other plants. Occasionally a severe freeze 

 in May will kill ninety or ninety-five per cent of 

 the young shoots on a grapevine. Expose a thou- 

 sand babies six months old to the same test, 

 and the result will probably be as variable; a 

 fraction of them will survive a test that would 



282 



