THE FALLING LEAVES 



builds up the body and mind of man. Death puts 

 an end to this activity alike in man and tree, and 

 a new kind of activity sets in — a disorganizing 

 activity, still with the aid of water and air and 

 living organisms. It is like the compositor dis- 

 tributing his type after the book is printed. The 

 micro-organisms answer to the compositor, but they 

 are of a diSerent kind from those which build up 

 the body in the first instance. But the living 

 body as a whole, with its complex of coordinating 

 organs and functions — what attended to that? 

 The cells build the parts, but what builds the 

 whole? 



How many things we have in common with the 

 trees! The same mysterious gift of life, to begin 

 with; the same primary elements — carbon, ni- 

 trogen, oxygen, and so on — in our bodies; and 

 many of the same vital functions — respiration, 

 circulation, absorption, assimilation, reproduction. 

 Protoplasm is the basis of life in both, and the cell 

 is the architect that builds up the bodies of both. 

 Trees are rooted men and men are walking trees. 

 The tree absorbs its earth materials through the 

 minute hairs on its rootlets, called fibrillse, and the 

 animal body absorbs its nutriment through 

 analogous organs in the intestines, called lacteals. 



Whitman's expression "the slumbering and liquid 

 trees" often comes to my mind. They are the words 

 of a poet who sees hidden relations and meanings 



9 



