UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 



living matter is in the grip of the same physical laws 

 as the non-living inertia, gravity, friction, me- 

 chanical and chemical principles play the same part. 

 There are not two sets of physical laws, one for the 

 living and one for the non-living, but into the move- 

 ments of the former, even the humblest, there enters 

 another principle which is not in the same sense 

 amenable to physical law. A purposive act may use 

 gravity, but its genesis is above and beyond gravity. 

 I cannot walk across the room without the aid of 

 gravity, but gravity has nothing to do with the mo- 

 tive that sets me moving. The chemical reactions in 

 my body are the same as those outside my body, 

 only there are far more of them, and they are of 

 greater complexity, but the purposeful organs and 

 activities in the living are unknown in the non- 

 living world. 



We call that fortuitous or accidental in which we 

 see no purpose or design. The shape of the rocks, 

 the lines of the hills, the course of the streams, are 

 matters of chance. They are not purposive. The 

 whole earth's surface, the distribution of land and 

 water, of mountain and plain, is in this sense acci- 

 dental, though the result of the action and inter- 

 action of unimpeachable physical laws. Given the 

 conditions and the forces at work, these things could 

 not have been otherwise, though being otherwise 

 would have made no difference in the total result. 

 (Of course, a different distribution of the land and 



