UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 



delays, the cosmic cataclysms, the indifference to 

 life, a universe sown with dead worlds and with 

 extinct suns, the mindless depths, the supremacy of 

 mechanical laws, the unconscionable energy, all 

 this and more, with our ideas of a beneficent, om- 

 nipotent being governing all, of whose love and 

 concern for man this universe is the expression? 



The universe as the theatre of mechanical laws 

 the action and interaction of matter and energy 

 is godless; neither human nor divine attributes are 

 displayed there. It is only as the theatre of biologi- 

 cal laws that we can recognize hi it the sources of 

 our own lives or get any glimpse of what we call 

 mind. The source and fountain of life in the uni- 

 verse is clearly no more intent upon man than upon 

 any other form of life, even the humblest. All life 

 is cheap in the presence of the material forces. The 

 tempest and the earthquake blot out human com- 

 munities as unhesitatingly as they blot out commu- 

 nities of ants and mice. Fire, flood, gravity, and 

 chemical affinity respect nothing that lives. The 

 organizing tendency in matter, whatever be its 

 source, works as if it knew what it wanted when not 

 interfered with; it builds up its predetermined forms 

 and hands the secret of the craft down to succeed- 

 ing generations unerringly, so long as nothing di- 

 verts or confuses it, or imposes foreign purpose upon 

 it, as do the many parasites of the animal and vege- 

 table world. An insect stings a leaf or a stalk and 

 130 



