UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 



All living things know; they know what they 

 want, they know how to multiply, they know how 

 to fit themselves to their environment. We cannot 

 in the same sense ascribe intelligence to any of the 

 motions of inert matter; they are blind, fateful, 

 stereotyped. The cell is an intelligent being; 

 through the chemicophysical forces it builds up a 

 man and fits him with a brain and all his wonderful 

 organs and powers. It builds the flower, the seed, 

 the leaf, the stalk, the root, and through the mystery 

 of inheritance keeps up the succession of its kind. 

 Back of the cell is imorganized protoplasm, back of 

 that must lie still lower conditions of matter, and 

 so down till we come to the inorganic. But what is 

 it that sets the process of organization going and 

 keeps it up and pushes on and on through the bio- 

 logic ages, from lower to higher till man is reached? 

 Darwin says natural selection. But clearly natural 

 selection is a secondary process; there must be a 

 primeval onward impulse, something that profits by 

 selection, something that knows in a blind way 

 what it wants; that struggles, that gains and loses, 

 and that has a goal. The weak, the imfit, drop out; 

 that is natiural rejection. The strong, the fit, press on; 

 that is natural selection. But if there were no plan 

 or purpose, no urge from behind, no end to be 

 achieved, there would be neither selection nor re- 

 jection. Live things would progress no more than 

 do the pebbles on the beach. Do we not have to 

 138 



