UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 
mising, and life must adapt itself to it or cease to 
be. Man can and does alter his environment to a 
limited extent, but not so radically as his environ- 
ment alters him. He cannot change the air he 
breathes, or the water he drinks, or the nature of the 
food he eats, nor change his vital relations to the 
physical world. His mechanical relations, to a cer- 
tain extent, wait upon his will, but his vital rela- 
tions are forever fixed. The place and the hour 
leave their mark upon everything — more upon the 
plastic and adaptive forms of life than upon the 
rigid and immobile forms of death. If you and I had 
been born in another month, another season, or in 
another country than we were, can there be any 
doubt that we should have been quite other than 
we are? If Carlyle had come and settled here when 
Emerson invited him, is it not almost certain that 
his outlook upon life would have been radically 
changed, and his literary output different? The 
currents flow; life moulds itself to the moments as 
they fly. The almost infinite diversities of types and 
characters attest the influence of the chance hap- 
penings in the environment. The plains beget one 
type of life; the mountains, the desert, the sea, the 
wilderness beget others. The professions and occu- 
pations beget their types. The general type of a 
race long adjusted to its environment — the Eng- 
lish, the French, the Arabian, the Mongolian — 
remains fairly constant, but inside this constancy 
256 
