188 
BRAMBLES AND BAY LEAVES. 
creeps into towns and hides his head from the daylight, 
too conscious as he is that the tree shames him. The 
tree has filled its place, has developed all its energies to 
their full possibility; while in man the will has usurped 
the instinct, and the faculties remain unfolded. There¬ 
fore the tree fears not death, while man weeps before the 
falling of the leaf, and surrounds the death of his kindred 
with emblems of contrition and sorrow’. But in nature 
man is no better than the tree, and the individual, of 
whatever tribe, is of no value but as a fragment of the 
type on which the race is built Hence the tree has all 
the elements of growdh within and around it, and as it 
has no will to draw it aside, it grows up to the limit 
of these possibilities. "When, as a member of its 
race, its work is done, it falls, rots, and becomes the 
food of successive plants and creatures; and there is 
no weeping in the wood, no weeds of sorrow 7 in the 
solitude. 
Thus, in reality, there is no death ; and that which we 
regard as the cessation of existence, and which the 
browning of the leaf teaches us wdth shame and weeping, 
is only one of many changes through which all the 
types must pass, as they fulfil the universal law wdiich 
requires them to grow—to grow. And because man lias 
all the faculties of all the creatures combined, together 
with a will wdiich allows of no limit to its choice, a mind 
which knows no limit to its power, death is still less a 
truth to him, who can transmit the faculties of the 
inward as w 7 ell as the outward life, and perpetuate, even 
in dying, the chain of circumstances through which he 
has already passed. This civilizing, railroad building. 
