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 unorganized 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 unfit, drop out; 
that is natural 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 
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