FIELD AND STUDY 



living matter is upon the air through his lungs, and 

 upon the water through his digestive tract. Of all 

 the elements, he gets air alone at first hand; he 

 gets water at first and also at second hand, through 

 the tissues of animals and vegetables. He lives in 

 a sea of nitrogen and he cannot live without this 

 element, but he is powerless to appropriate it from 

 the air, as he is to appropriate hydrogen from water, 

 or iron from the ore. 



It is the nature of the oak to produce acorns, of 

 the apple-tree to produce apples. Each after its 

 kind. But what makes the kind — that is the mys- 

 tery. The same chemical elements, more or less, the 

 same physical processes in an oak and in a maple, 

 the same water, the same soil, the same air nourish 

 both; osmosis, endosmosis^ oxidation, hydration, 

 and so on, the same in each; and yet one is an oak, 

 and the other a maple. 



You may bring up a dog on theiood of a man, and 

 yet you cannot make a man of him. The putrid 

 fungus will grow under the same conditions that 

 nourish a rose. The secret of life with all its myriad 

 forms is hidden in the nature of things, and there 

 we have to leave it. We finally run nearly every 

 question of nature to hole in the nature of things. 

 How our mental and spiritual life share in the 

 nature of things is a hard question. 



" Objects gross and the unseen soul are one," 

 says Whitman. Matter and mind blend, but how? 

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