LIFE AND CHANCE 
man to that extent involved in these contingencies. 
In this sense I think all terrestrial life is accidental. 
The working of the same physical and mechanical 
forces lies far back of him in the depths of the astro- 
nomic ages. Physical laws, so far as all forms of life 
are concerned, work irrespective of them. If the 
winds or the tides bear the shipwrecked mariner to 
safety, we say it was accidental; likewise where the 
air-currents will drop the winged seed is a matter of 
chance. The same chance, or law of probability in 
regard to living things, prevails as to where the 
thunderbolt will strike the earth. It is more prob- 
able that it will strike certain kinds of trees in 
the landscape than certain other kinds; in a wood 
of mixed hemlock, pine, oak, maple, beech, the 
chances seem to be that the pines and the hemlocks 
are in the greatest danger. Physical laws determine 
these things, as they do when buildings and persons 
are struck. In the human sense Nature does not 
select. In her garden there is nothing that takes the 
place of man who selects one of two, or favors one 
and suppresses the other, and takes a short cut to 
specific ends. Nature does not guard against waste 
or delay. All time and all matter are hers, and her 
losses and gains are all one. 
The forests get planted and trimmed, and a certain 
sort of order and unity prevails among them — the 
pines in one place, the spruce in another, the beech, 
the maple, the oak, the cedars in still others. Some 
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