THE SUMMIT OF THE YEARS 



The only analogue of these things I now think of 

 in nature about us is afforded by a swarm of bees, 

 wherein all the complex economies of the hive are 

 carried on without a single or separate seat of author- 

 ity in the hive. Maeterlinck aptly calls this invisible 

 authority the "spirit of the hive" — a name for 

 something that we know not of. So one may say, 

 the spirit of the body, or the spirit of the tree, deter- 

 mines and controls all its complex economies, and 

 makes of it a unit. 



The cells that are the architects of one man's body 

 cannot be distinguished from the' cells that build 

 another man's body, yet behold the difference 

 between the two men — in size, disposition, brain- 

 power! It looks as if there were something in the 

 man that is not of his cells. 



Indeed, the mystery of the cell has never been 

 penetrated. A man, like every other animal, begins 

 in a speck of nucleated protoplasm — so small that 

 it seems to be almost at the vanishing point; yet in 

 that microscopical entity there may slumber a 

 Shakespeare, a Newton, a Darwin, a Lincoln, with 

 all the complex inheritance of race and of family 

 traits, and with all the wondrous individual endow- 

 ments of mental powers. 



That cell, invisible to the naked eye, is a world in 



itself. It divides and subdivides, and its progeny, 



apparently of their own motion, begin to organize 



the human body and to build it up, as I have said. 



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