ANALOGY — TKTJE AND FALSE 47 



and animals that it has upon plants, — it lessens 

 the powers of reproduction. The lowest organisms 

 multiply hy myriads ; the higher barely keep from 

 retrograding. A wild apple is full of seeds ; in a 

 choice pippin the seeds are largely abortive. Indeed, 

 all weeds and parasites seem bent on filling the world 

 with their progeny, while the higher forms fall off 

 and tend to extinction. Such agreements and corre- 

 spondences point to identity of law. The analogy 

 is vital. 



In the animal economy there are analogies with 

 outward nature. Thus respiration is a kind of com- 

 bustion. Life itself is a kind of fire which goes out 

 when it has no fuel to feed upon. The foliage of a 

 tree has functions like those of the lungs of an ani- 

 mal. Darwin has noted the sleep of plants and 

 their diurnal motions. Dr. Holmes had a bold fancy 

 that trees are animals, with their tails in the air 

 and their heads in the ground ; but there is nothing in 

 the trunk and branches of a tree analogous to a tail, 

 though there is a sort of rudimentary intelligence in 

 the root, as Darwin has shown. We use the tree as 

 a symbol of the branching of a family ; hence the 

 family tree. But the analogy is not a true one. 

 The branches of a family multiply and diverge when 

 traced backward the same as forward. You had two 

 parents, they had four, these four had eight, and so 

 on. If the human race sprang from one pair, then 

 are its branchings more a kind of network, an end- 

 less multiplication of meshes. All the past appears 

 to centre in you, and all the future to spring from 



