THE SUMMIT OF THE YEARS 



up and sustained the state, and that went on from 

 day to day and from year to year entirely beyond 

 his thought or ken! A man may say, "I am the 

 body"; but the body is an aggregate of vital and 

 chemical and mechanical forces that go their way 

 without his leave or conscious knowledge. He can 

 arrest them or destroy them, as the king can his 

 subjects, but he cannot restore them or renew them. 

 The forces that brought you and me here, and sus- 

 tain us, how complex, how far-reaching, how imper- 

 sonal and impartial, and how little subjected to our 

 will! 



When hostile germs from without invade a man's 

 body, he is ill, he has a chill, a fever, an inflamma- 

 tion, but little he knows of the warfare — the strug- 

 gles, the defeats, the deaths — that are going on in 

 his tissues. Some of the lower forms have the power 

 of regeneration, or of re-growing a lost part, • — a 

 tail, a section, a limb, — but man's body lost this 

 power when it took on its highly organized nervous 

 system with its huge complex brain. 



In every living thing, it is cell wedded to cell, 

 communities of cells wedded to communities, and 

 all working on a plan unknown to any group of them. 

 Yonder oak or pine started from a similar minute 

 germ, and became a vast cooperative community, 

 or series of cooperative communities, of associate 

 cells, with no cell or community directing the 

 whole. 



19 



