UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 
and change. A static equilibrium is the tendency of 
the one; a dynamic disequilibrium is the aim of the 
other. The boy’s hoop stands up as long as he keeps 
it running; it does not have time to fall, gravity is 
defeated every moment. This is a type of living 
matter; the life impulse keeps it from stopping and 
falling down. 
It is easy to see that chance, or the law of proba- 
bility, would have brought the world of dead matter 
where it is, but the living world presents a different 
problem. Here we strike the world of organization, 
parts fitted to parts, and parts subordinated to 
parts, the many organized into the one. Still there 
is the same hit-and-miss method of the action and 
interaction of bodies upon one another, the blind 
inorganic forces taking a hand in the game of life; 
the seeds are sown by the chance action of the winds 
and the floods, the forests are planted and trimmed 
by chance; the chance actions of squirrels and jays 
and crows plant the heavy nuts, the grazing cows 
plant the apple and red-thorn seeds, the fruit-eating 
birds scatter and drop the many small fruits; there 
is chance in the planting and trimming and weeding 
of Nature’s garden, and in its locality, but is there 
chance in the production of her living gardener, in 
life itself? It is in the reciprocal action of the living 
and the non-living that life goes on. Chance, inside 
of mechanical and chemical laws, rules in the one; 
chance, limited and subordinated to specific ends, 
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