UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 



machine going, then turns it over to secondary 

 causes. How is it possible to conceive of so-called 

 secondary causes, except as phases of the First 

 Cause? When we use the phrase, the idea of dele- 

 gated power, drawn from oiu" civic experience, seems 

 to be in our minds. But I doubt if the universe is 

 run on this plan, though our ecclesiasticism has made 

 much of this idea. Omr idea of cause, anyhow, is 

 drawn entirely from our experience with material 

 bodies and forces. In living nature, and in the 

 brain of man, cause and effect meet and become one. 

 There is no up and no down, no east and no west, no 

 north and no south, in the depths of sidereal space; 

 neither do any other of our mundane notions of 

 primary and secondary causes apply to the universe 

 as a whole. 



The rain causes the grass to grow, and the sun 

 causes the snow to melt, but we cannot apply the 

 idea of cause, in this sense, to natiu-e as a whole, but 

 only to parts of nature. Gravitation caused New- 

 ton's apple to faU, but what causes the earth to fall 

 forever and ever, and never to fall upon the body 

 that is said to attract it? 



Huxley's scientific faith was more radical and un- 

 compromising than Darwin's. It never went into 

 partnership with the old teleological notions of cre- 

 ation. Huxley not only accepted the development 

 theory, with all that it implies, but, so far as I can 

 make out, he accepted the theory of the physico- 

 166 



