UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 
a goal, but is delayed im reaching it, and, further- 
more, that the goal is not an end in itself. The Eter- 
nal seems to indulge creative energy just as an 
artist does for the sake of self-expression — the 
joy of creation. The cosmic energy seems to have 
no other end than this. It fills the world with life 
just to see it struggle and develop. The earth is 
a canvas of living pigments, or a page of living 
words, or a score of living chords, and the picture 
or the poem or the symphony is for the joy of self- 
activity. The picture is in high lights and low 
lights, it is shaded with suffering and pain and fail- 
ure; the poem halts and is full of dull and prosaic 
as well as of lyric passages; the symphony is full 
of discords as well as of harmonies. 
OI 
Nothing is plainer, I think, than that forms of 
life of the same species begin life with different 
degrees of vitality, whatever that may be. Of a 
thousand spears of corn in May, some will stand 
a frost better than others; nine hundred may be 
killed and one hundred may live. The same is true 
of many other plants. Occasionally a severe freeze 
in May will kill ninety or ninety-five per cent of 
the young shoots on a grapevine. Expose a thou- 
sand babies six months old to the same test, 
and the result will probably be as variable; a 
fraction of them will survive a test that would 
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