UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 
living matter is in the grip of the same physical laws 
as the non-living — inertia, gravity, friction, me- 
chanical and chemical principles play the same part. 
There are not two sets of physical laws, one for the 
living and one for the non-living, but into the move- 
ments of the former, even the humblest, there enters 
another principle which is not in the same sense 
amenable to physical law. A purposive act may use 
gravity, but its genesis is above and beyond gravity. 
I cannot walk across the room without the aid of 
gravity, but gravity has nothing to do with the mo- 
tive that sets me moving. The chemical reactions in 
my body are the same as those outside my body, 
only there are far more of them, and they are of 
greater complexity, but the purposeful organs and 
activities in the living are unknown in the non- 
living world. 
We call that fortuitous or accidental in which we 
see no purpose or design. The shape of the rocks, 
the lines of the hills, the course of the streams, are 
matters of chance. They are not purposive. The 
whole earth’s surface, the distribution of land and 
water, of mountain and plain, is in this sense acci- 
dental, though the result of the action and inter- 
action of unimpeachable physical laws. Given the 
conditions and the forces at work, these things could 
not have been otherwise, though being otherwise 
would have made no difference in the total result. 
(Of course, a different distribution of the land and 
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