LIFE AND CHANCE 
rules in the other. Fate and freedom each play a 
part in life. The plants that spread by runners are 
free to spread in all directions, but they are fated 
to run; the vines that climb by tendrils are free to 
reach out in all directions, and their tendrils react 
to whatever they touch, and cling there; the fate of 
their organization limits them to this mode of get- 
ting up in the sun and air. Were there not some- 
thing fixed and upright, the tendriled vines and 
plants could not get on in the world. Every tree and 
every plant has its typical form, but what variations 
inside that pattern or form! The pines and spruces 
must throw out their branches in whorls at regular 
intervals, with one central shoot leading the ranks 
upward; this is the fixed or stereotyped form, but 
kill the central shoot, and the tree is free to pro- 
mote one of the lateral shoots to take the place of 
the lost leader. The maple-leaves, the oak-leaves, 
are of fixed patterns, but how hard to find two leaves 
of the same tree that are exactly alike! The mating 
of the queen bee and the drones in the air of a sum- 
mer’s day is a chance meeting; the mating of men 
and women from which marriages result is largely a 
chance meeting; the fertilization of flowers through 
the agency of insects is largely a chance occurrence; 
if the weather is bad for a number of consecutive 
days, the fertilization does not take place. Chance 
enters into life in this way. As the inorganic forces 
are blind and haphazard, and the wind bloweth 
Q47 
