UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 



of the wind. The organism is built up by the same 

 chemical reactions that would pull it down; its 

 strength is the strength of the forces it has over- 

 come. Life has no capital but that which it draws 

 from the non-Kving. The modus operandi of this 

 drawing science may analyze and explain, but the 

 secret of life itself — that impulse which hf ts this 

 wave of matter up into these myriads of hving 

 forms — is beyond the reach of scientific analysis. 



Our breathing and drinking, I have said, are on 

 the principle of the bellows, but the bellows implies 

 the man working it. So our breathing implies the 

 life-principle working the respiratory apparatus; 

 but working from within, not from without, sus- 

 taining a vital and not merely a mechanical relation 

 to it. Of this we have no parallel in om* mechanical 

 contrivances. The nearest we can come to it is in 

 the electromagnetic world, where the active and 

 potent principle is inseparable from the ponderable 

 body which it animates. 



A man may repeat the type of character of his 

 father or grandfather — the main course of his life 

 may be determined by his unconscious inheritances, 

 or by his race, and the nation of which he forms 

 a part, and yet have the utmost sense of freedom, 

 because these things do not act as external or for- 

 eign forces, but form the body and substance of 

 his inmost personality; his identity is one with 

 them. 



146 



