UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 
Early man saw and felt and heard spirits on all sides 
of him — in fire, in water, in air; but he controlled 
and used these things only so far as he was practi- 
cally scientific. To catch the wind in his sails he had 
to put himself in right physical relation to it. If he 
stayed the ravages of flood or fire, he was compelled 
to cease to propitiate these powers as offended dei- 
ties, and fight them with non-human forces, as he 
does to-day. And the man of to-day may have any 
number of superstitions about his relations to the 
things around him, and about theirs to him, but he 
is successful in dealing with them only when he 
forgets his superstitions and approaches things on 
rational grounds. 
Our fathers who held that every event of their 
lives was fixed and unalterable, according to the 
decrees of an omnipotent being, could not have sur- 
vived had their daily conduct been in harmony with 
their beliefs. But when ill, they sent for the doctor; 
if the house got afire, they tried to put the fire out; 
if crops failed, they improved their husbandry. 
They slowly learned that better sanitation lessened 
the death-rate; that temperate habits prolonged 
life; that signs and wonders in the heavens and in 
the earth had no human significance; that wars 
abated as men grew more just and reasonable. We 
come to grief the moment that we forget that Na- 
ture is neither for nor against us. We can master her 
forces only when we see them as they are in and of 
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