LIFE AND CHANCE 



man to that extent involved in these contingencies. 

 In this sense I think all terrestrial life is accidental. 

 The working of the same physical and mechanical 

 forces lies far back of him in the depths of the astro- 

 nomic ages. Physical laws, so far as all forms of life 

 are concerned, work irrespective of them. If the 

 winds or the tides bear the shipwrecked mariner to 

 safety, we say it was accidental; likewise where the 

 air-currents will drop the winged seed is a matter of 

 chance. The same chance, or law of probability in 

 regard to living things, prevails as to where the 

 thunderbolt will strike the earth. It is more prob- 

 able that it will strike certain kinds of trees in 

 the landscape than certain other kinds; in a wood 

 of mixed hemlock, pine, oak, maple, beech, the 

 chances seem to be that the pines and the hemlocks 

 are in the greatest danger. Physical laws determine 

 these things, as they do when buildings and persons 

 are struck. In the human sense Nature does not 

 select. In her garden there is nothing that takes the 

 place of man who selects one of two, or favors one 

 and suppresses the other, and takes a short cut to 

 specific ends. Nature does not guard against waste 

 or delay. All time and all matter are hers, and her 

 losses and gains are all one. 



The forests get planted and trimmed, and a certain 



sort of order and unity prevails among them the 



pines in one place, the spruce in another, the beech, 



the maple, the oak, the cedars in still others. Some 



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