UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 
Science analyzes all the life-processes, and knows all 
the mechanism of living beings; but it cannot find 
the secret of life. Life, as such, it knows not; it only 
knows its material elements. Literature alone can 
grasp and interpret life; it names a vital force at 
which science scoffs; it names spirit, but spirit does 
not fall within the categories of science. The latest 
biological science names a new force, “biotic en- 
ergy,” — an old friend with a new name; and it 
names a new substance, “plasmogen,” which it has 
not yet found, and which is just as hypothetical as 
vital force. 
The scientific interpretation of the universe repels 
a great many minds because it lays the emphasis 
upon matter itself instead of upon something super- 
material. It hesitates to name a creative energy; but 
makes matter itself creative, and does not try to 
help it out with teleological conception. Science 
sees man arise out of the earth, as literally as it sees 
the plants and the trees arise, and it is convinced 
that if a moving picture could be had of man’s long 
and wonderful line of descent through the geologic 
ages, we should see his development or growth from 
unorganized matter up through hundreds of chang- 
ing living forms during the geological ages, till we 
behold him as he is to-day. Condense his history, 
cut out the element of time, as the moving-picture 
machine cuts it out of the changes in the growing 
plant, and behold the protozoa mount and unfold, 
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