{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_65161/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_65161","id":"gutenberg_65161","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/65161","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Novels","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Giant sequoia","Life"],"text":"[Frontispiece: The Forest Giant]\n\n\n\n[Illustration: Title page]\n\n\n\n  _The Forest Giant_\n\n  _by_\n\n  ADRIEN LE CORBEAU\n\n\n  _Translated from the French by_\n  J. H. ROSS\n\n\n  _Jonathan Cape_\n  ELEVEN GOWER STREET LONDON\n\n\n\n\n  FIRST PUBLISHED IN MCMXXIV\n\n  MADE & PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN\n  BY BUTLER & TANNER LTD.\n  FROME AND\n  LONDON\n\n\n\n\n_Contents_\n\nCHAP.\n\n1 THE ODYSSEY\n\n2 THE GENUS TREMBLES INTO CONSCIOUSNESS\n\n3 THE KINDLY DARKNESS\n\n4 CONTRASTS WHICH ARE NOT CONTRASTS\n\n5 CAUGHT UP INTO THE STREAM OF LIFE\n\n6 THE LAW OF BALANCE\n\n7 METAMORPHOSES\n\n8 WHAT THE MOON SAW\n\n9 WHEN THE CORSELET SNAPS\n\n10 THE MIRROR OF CHANGELESS TIME\n\n11 THE WHEEL OF LIFE LIVED\n\n12 WHEN THE WOOD-DUST FLOATED IN THE AIR\n\n13 WHAT IS CALLED DEATH\n\n14 THE THEORY OF ETERNAL SLEEPLESSNESS\n\nCONCLUSION: WITHIN A CELL\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\n_The Odyssey_\n\nFor years on end it had been rolling, across the plains, through the\ndeep meadow grasses, under the dim echoing archways of the forest.\nAlways, in heat and cold, beneath blue skies, or skies clouded with\nrain and hail and snow, it had been rolling ceaselessly.  One day it\nwould be gilded by the sunlight--but not softened; another day\ngrizzled streaks of rain soaked it--without refreshment.  It was\nburied, to all appearances for ever, by drifts of snow--but was not\nhurt.  It had crossed cataracts of light and floods of shadow; it had\nbeen rocked by soft winds and hurled dizzily into the air by the\nshrieking gusts of cyclones; and it had met all these things--the\nsweetness of the day, the shade of night, the winters, the springs,\nthe summers--with the same submissive, invulnerable apathy.  It had\nwaited its hour, ready, if need be, to wait yet much longer.\n\nThose who boast of their travels and adventures should think over\nthis journey and its conditions.  We have glimpses of other\ncountries, we climb mountains, we run through woods and fields; but\nour varieties and difficulties are as nothing to the differences of\nits varied blades of grass, to its dark holes in the ground, its\nmounds of earth or snow, to all the obstacles which it met and\novercame or slipped past on its road.  Our gallops on shore or\nvoyages at sea do not compare with its mad career as the sport of\nstorms and mountain-torrents.  Time and space fought over the little\nhelpless rolling body.  The elements loosed out their terrors round\nit like an evil dream, seeming to toss it about in prize.\n\nEverything seemed to toss it about.  It was girt round by\nimmensities, which might be azure or glittering with gold in summer,\npallid dull or menacing in winter, silent as the abyss by night, and\nterrible with a myriad of unknown noises in the day; but nothing\ndaunted it.  Within its tiny form it held other visions, greater yet,\nvisions and million-old memories of the childhood of the world, when\nthe waves moaned in another measure, and the agony of the vision of\nearth was different.  So it waited the favourable event which would\ngive it life: or the sign of dissolution, to presage its death.\n\nThe light beating of a bird's wings, one dawn, had began its career\nby flinging it out of the tiny shelter (a crevice in a low branch of\nthe mother-tree) from which the mightiest winds had been unable in\nlong years to tear it.  It was falling in slow gyrations through the\ngreen air, across the red-barred dawn-fires of the sun, when a quick\nbreath of wind lifted its mossy form and carried it, from near the\nground, far out into space.  In its flight it grazed, time and again,\nthe rude bark of trees, sank to ground level, skimmed it, and rose\nonce more before it fell at last upon the polished surface of a\nstone, where it lay till dark and through the night till the next\nnoon.  The air above it was heavy with the humming of insects, and\naround stretched the very old forest, vibrant with life.\n\nThe merest trifle might have carried this tiny seed of Californian\npine a few inches farther, where lay fat moist soil, good for\ntree-growth; but such was not its lot.  The vast and shining EYE\nwhich oversees the dizzy spectacle of the universe, and comprehends\nit in its dreadful whole as in its least bewildering detail, this EYE\nhad doubtless not lost sight of it.  Suddenly all light around was\nblotted out: a great mass overwhelmed it and carried it away with\nheavy abrupt movements.  It felt itself embedded in a soft warm\nsubstance, among grains of sand, dead leaves and grass, which were\npicked up now and then from the ground, carried awhile, and dropped\n(only to be replaced by others), in a sequence of rudely rhythmical\nmovement.  The pine-seed had been caught up in the frog of an\nanimal's foot, fixed in it deeply, so that it was not till after many\ndays at last delivered, when the beast waded across a brook and left\nthe seed on a dry sand-bank, near sunset, in the deep glow of the\nevening rays.\n\nThe seed had now quitted the forest for an immense, bare, open\ndesert, a new prospect of the world.  Here were no rustling grasses\nnor fluttering leaves, no clashing together of dry branches, no birds\nto sing nor beasts to howl: none of that rich, wide, strange stirring\nof the mighty jungle, whose breathing and mysterious rumour was\nchoked (like the cries of its animals and the laboured thrumming of\nthe winds through its vaulted trees) by the rank smell of sap and the\nexhalations of dead leaves and teeming soil.  A light wind blew the\nseed across the sand, for hours driving it about, backwards,\nforwards, to right or left, sometimes in great circles, and sometimes\nstationary against a stone till a new gust should send it forth\nagain, past its obstacle, on yet another abandoned desultory course.\nThe world was overspread with an intense blue, from which light\nseemed to fall in sheets.\n\nLater this brilliant blue turned to a bleeding red, through which the\nsun's golden arrows slid into violet bands and faded gently.  An\nexquisite freshness fell from heaven as the purple mildness of\nevening came down upon the world.  Yet the pine-seed could not rest.\nThe wind, as it became sweeter, became stronger, and sent it again\nacross the sand-spaces of its former road, while about it a new life\nbegan to stir.  Insects which had been hiding all day danced over it,\nor circled violently about it, or stopped to smell it, or tried in\nvain to crack open its hard shell.  Their grotesque shadows ran\nblackly over the silver sand.  At times green shining specks came\nnear, hovered a moment, and vanished in a soft shiver of wings.\n\nAll the while the pine-seed resigned itself with unconquerable\npatience to its senseless course.  Dawn came.  The sun climbed high\nin the heavens.  Yesterday's burning blue again hemmed in the world;\nand after it came night and dawn, and day and night again once more.\nIn the same wide desert the pine-seed rolled about, the sport of the\nsame winds, pitting against their caprice the constant apathetic\nendurance of its little, round, hard body.\n\nSo weeks and months flowed by, times which for other things or other\nbeings elsewhere may have been momentous; but which for the sequoia\nseed were all alike.  Then one day the sky darkened, and rain began\nto fall.  The first slow heavy drops seemed to nail the seed to the\nsand, and whole days passed; but in the end, just at twilight, water\nbegan to trickle over the ground and to collect in plashes here and\nthere over the huge sandy surface.\n\nThe strange power of water to absorb light enables it to preserve the\nclearness of the daylight, even when the light has fled, and makes\nthe shadows which it reflects in the darkness appear even darker than\ntheir truth.  The sea gives, better than any other thing, a feeling\nof the mystery of never-ending distances.  It strikes not merely on\nliving beings, through their imagination, their blood, their nerves,\nbut seems almost to project itself into materials.  These\nwater-plashes at last ran together into little streams which carried\noff in their current everything not strong enough to resist them.\nConsequently the pine-seed found itself all at once flooded with\nfreshness.  The liquid got right into it, penetrated unreservedly\ninto its outer husk, till the little seed felt itself soaked.  None\nthe less it kept its vital force intact, and neither split nor\nsprouted.  The life-force handed down to it through millions of\ngenerations was too vigorous and too well-prepared for its special\nfuture, whether near or distant, to break up in the tiny frame.  Only\nthis time inertia was not its sole defence against the assailing\nelements: it found in itself a happy elasticity which helped to keep\nout surplus liquid.\n\nThus for the whole rainy season the seed wandered about the\nsand-desert, going with the waters down an imperceptible slope.  On\nall sides the waves now compassed it, with the grey sky coving above\nit and them in the daytime; but at night it was drowned by water and\nby darkness.  The waters, as ever, darkened the shadows of these\nshades circling in space.  A chill, blind, impenetrable horror\novercame the pine-seed.  It appeared, almost like an endowed being,\nto hesitate in its career.  It struck against stones, seemed to cling\nto the tufts of grass which the waters carried down with them, seemed\nto betray a longing to stop, while the waves, so infinitely great,\nwithdrew it gently but irresistibly from every obstacle.  It yielded\npatiently, strong perhaps in its sense of future greatness.  The\noutside forces, despite their violence, could not prevail over the\ninsignificant seed whose giant bulk would some day laugh at the\nroaring of the winds and the struggles of the waves; and as it was\ntossed about during the night in the immensity of shadow and water,\nmay not the sense of past existence have come to life in it, and a\nmemory of that other chaos with the very different terrors, as\nexperienced by its forbears in the first stages of the world?  So it\njourneyed, firmly and humbly, towards the unknown.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER 2\n\n_The Genus trembles into Consciousness_\n\nOne day the stream of water by which the seed was carried along sank\nsuddenly--whirling down a funnel in the ground.  Slowly the grey\nlight of day grew less as the seed dived deeper and deeper, till in\nabsolute darkness it was rushing madly down the water-spout.  Hoarse\nbellowings resounded about its long subterranean voyage, asserting\nthemselves above the stifled noises of the passage of the buried\nriver through the bowels of the earth.  For weeks and months the\npine-kernel revolved in these invisible currents, at times slipping\nslowly along the twisting flow, at other times hurled forward at a\ndizzy speed in the dwelling coolness of the under-ground.\n\nSuddenly the booming of the flood deepened.  A hesitating cautious\nlight came trembling down the waves, and with a huge guggling the\nseed found itself thrown out into a greenish mass of translucent\nwater, the volume of a river which now took charge of its further\ncourse, and in whose stream it long drifted, while the sun gilded the\nchanging surface or the moon turned it all to silver.  The tiny seed\nseemed lost in time, swallowed up in space, as it floated on top of\nthe water or sank into its depth.  The contrasts were overwhelming,\nwhen the insignificant grain was set beside the river which carried\nit along, beside the wide champaigns of the two banks, beside the\nunplumbed void above, in whose pale-blue transparency some far grey\nand white clouds were fading or floating.  How small it looked so set\nin infinite space!  and yet the pine-kernel had its own part to play,\nand of the thousands of interacting forces in earth and heaven some\nwere specially appointed to fulfil its destiny.\n\nWhere did it go in this great smooth-running river?  How was it that\nthe immensities among which it wandered did not blot out its faint\nexistence?  Had the all-seeing Eye really appointed each one of the\nmany incidents which marked its start in life?  Can we, in view of\nthis case, believe that everything has been fore-ordained since the\nbeginning of time (which has never been), and is ordained to the end\nof time (which also will never be)?  No doubt there are the same laws\nfor beings and for things, for constellations of dazzling size as for\natoms too small to see, laws which operate in a like spirit and\nentail like inevitable consequences of related sense.  Worlds and\nbeings, objective things and abstractions of thought and instinct all\nrun a similar course of birth, climax, and decline.  They begin in\nnameless processes, develop in phases according to their kinds, and\nend one day to make room for other transformations equally\nindescribable.\n\nAccordingly the pine-seed was carried by the river in devious\ncourses, thrown up on the bank, snatched away by the wind, rolled\nover the plains, cast up the mountain-side, tossed back into the\nfields, led here and there for an incalculable time, the sport of\ninapprehensible caprice.  A hundred times it nearly fell into a spot\nfavourable for taking root, and as often it was driven away from its\ngoal by forces apparently hostile.  If the little seed had been\ngifted with an observing sense it would probably have seen the lot\nand end of every event in its own destiny.  Once it hung for years a\nfew inches from a suitable hole in some fat land, and was left there\nunmoved by the fresh winds of spring-time, by the ardent summers, by\nthe icy falls of snow.  Nothing helped it; till finally a pebble\nslipped--for some unrecorded reason--picked it up on one of its muddy\nfaces and held it there for weeks, to set it free again on a path of\nturf.\n\nSuch incidents often happened, to make the seed entertain the common\nhope of its species, the chance of taking root; but always some\nunknown force dashed the near fulfilment from it.  However, one\nmorning, at the edge of a forest and on rain-softened ground, the\nsequoia seed at last got leave to germinate.  The leave was given\nsuddenly and precisely.  A gust of wind, blowing across a dead calm,\nlifted it some hundreds of yards at a bound, and put it down on the\nslope of a mound of soil by an open hole.  None the less the seed\nmight have lain short of its place for years, for it was fixed firmly\nenough to nullify the impulse of the winds, and the many and various\nundulations of the ground-surface; but now at length its natural\npurpose was nearly achieved.  A few minutes later a dung-beetle\narrived, took it up between its claws, easily avoided the several\nobstacles of the mound, and dropped it, as though intelligently, on\nthe very edge of the pit.  The insect then, as in obedience to some\nnon-apparent but exact will, began heedlessly to fill in the hole\nwith rich earth.\n\nSo from a little seed and a little soil there will be born here a\n_sequoia gigantea_, the hugest plant of earth.  It seems a miracle\nthat the future bulk of the tree, its grain, its pith, the shape and\ncolour of its needles, the special nature of its sap, the many tens\nof hundreds of years of its life should be found in a pin-head of\nvegetable fibre; and another miracle that the microscopic seed should\nalready contain not merely its plant's organic nature, but also its\ntastes and distastes, its pleasures and its pains, all the range of\nyet unformed impressions which would colour its existence in the\nworld.\n\nIn such changeless fashion does the vital spark of species run\nthrough a myriad centuries.  It was for the sequoia, as it is for the\ninnumerable forms of life upon earth, for the solar planets, and for\nthose unknown planets circulating in space, fragments perhaps of suns\nbeyond our ken.  From this aspect the law of perpetuity seems to be\nan eternal re-beginning of the same careers, to be pursued through\nsimilar stages to a like end.\n\nHow often we find in ourselves hopes, desires, griefs, apparently\nunrelated to our own experiences and circumstances!  They come to us\nfrom very far, these feelings, and in answering to them we follow a\nmysterious and indiscoverable chain of forerunners.  Their fate is to\nsome extent our own.  Like memory (activity's retreating shadow),\ntheir sensations mix and mirror themselves brokenly in us, quickening\nin us hesitant, half-felt surmises about their final cause, or as to\nwhy these reflections of a long-lost age are sent to us.\n\nThe play of external events upon our destiny seems to us as\ninexplicable as the inherited influences which direct us from within.\nThe tiny seed, for example, in circumstances apparently hostile and\nunfavourable to its development, yet by a few exact but unexpected\nactions of others, found itself free to work out its fate; and to\nwork it out just after a moment when it had seemed indefinitely\ndelayed.\n\nWe men living under the sun can usefully apply the lessons of our own\nexistence to this case.  We are very far from grasping the whole\nscheme of the forces which dispose our lives; indeed, we get only\nfaint occasional sidelights upon them.  They strike our attention\noften because of the mysterious symmetry with which certain things\nseem to happen.  We call them good and bad periods when an order of\nevents occurs to help or hinder our fortunes; and it is significant\nthat there should be a family likeness in such series of affairs.\nThe vision of the lean and fat cows in the Bible is only one instance\nof this age-old observation; and we have also noted that cases\napparently hopeless sometimes contain, beyond our sight, their own\nhappy issue which bursts into view through a union of unexpected and\napparently unrelated circumstances.  This law sways not merely our\nhuman affairs but universal fate.  Does the all-creating Eye really\nsee and set in motion His whole universe rhythmically, in tune with\none principle which is concealed from our sight by the terrifying\ncomplexity of detail in daily life in the visible and invisible\nworlds?\n\nIf so, the universe takes shape as a harmonious whole.  What we know\nand what we do not know of the millions of existences everywhere at\nany time all are driving towards a common end.  From the littlenesses\nhere and the greatnesses there would emerge, perhaps, for those who\ncould see it, a whole immeasurably, inconceivably huge.  The atoms\nseem a mass to us, sometimes, though doubtless they differ among\nthemselves.  Men, despite their individual characters, appear, when\nseen in bulk and from a distance, as a group-whole, comparable with\nbees or ants.  From far enough our earth, despite its diversifying\nhills and plains and valleys, would seem a smooth body; and if some\nbeing could comprehend the entire universe at once, by means and from\na view-point beyond our understanding, what would it look like\nall-together?\n\nThat no man will ever tell us.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER 3\n\n_The Kindly Darkness_\n\nBuried between two layers of soil the little pine-kernel woke from\nits inactivity.  Underground was warm and moist; and therefore the\nseed swelled up with comfort, and relaxed itself with pleasure.  The\ndamp crept through it, right through it, with a gentle persistence in\nmarked contrast with the brutal attack of the flood which had swept\nit away but had not broken down its stubborn defence.  The heat of\nthe subsoil made the seed ferment, and summoned it to live; but the\nmysterious centre of life in it found a fellow-feeling in the equally\nmysterious darkness which wrapped it about, full of the unaccountable\nimpalpable emanations of all life upon earth.\n\nFor this dark we have an unreasonable fear, and it is curious to\ninquire into the causes of the horror of blackness which fixes itself\nin our hearts at the moment of their first pulsations.  The black is\nsoothing, whence therefore our agony at thought of it?  Why do our\nheads swim when we look at a graveyard and reckon the darkness of the\ntomb; and the nothingness, in its grip, of things which have been but\nwill be no more?  Half-stifled we read a name inscribed on the marble\nslab, and imagine the unknown dead man as he lived--what he did, whom\nhe loved, how he suffered--and we conjure up in our minds the poor\nblank wraith, now for ever departed from the light of day.\n\nWe can go further, and from the one build up the army of those who\nhave lived, of those alive, of those who will live after us: and\nthese unknown shadows press about our familiar faces, flutter and\ncrowd in and out of the stage-properties of our own existence--like\ndead leaves in the autumn winds.  Particular shapes haunt us with\ndisquieting persistency.  We find ourselves in streets, or at shows,\nor in public parks in the midst of a mob of people whom we do not\nknow, but who live beside us; and we hear them speaking, and can\npicture to ourselves what they care about.  They are of all ages, old\nand young, men, women, children, black-eyed, blue-eyed, grey-eyed,\nwith fair or dark hair or hair withered white, full-lipped, or with\nlips shrivelled by passing time; but all of them are living, are\nthere, glad or sorry, before our eyes.  An idea takes possession of\nus and strengthens in us till we tremble with it.  We think--\"All\nthese individuals about us, whom we could touch as they move, and\nwhom we know to have feelings and hopes and preoccupations, all these\nbeings are destined to disappear one day, whatever they do, wherever\nthey may be, no matter how strong, how well-founded, how firm.  In a\nhundred years they will just have existed, will be nowhere\ndiscoverable.  What will have become of them?\"  And again we see the\ncold, forbidding cemeteries, with the ranked and serried silent tombs\nall shut fast among their flowers.  We shiver at the thought that\nthere, under the cover-stones, beneath the turf, below thick layers\nof soil, are only blanched bones scattered through that dark which\nmakes us tremble with the notion that it is in some strange fashion\nour enemy.\n\nSuch is the common mistake of reason when imagination has taken\ncharge of a mind; and in combating it we must first distinguish\nbetween its cause and its effects.  These shadows which we fear only\nhave power upon us after we have irrevocably ceased to exist.  It is\nnot the darkness which destroys us; on the contrary, it is profoundly\ncreative, doing its work, with that odd prudishness of creation, by\nchoice out of sight.\n\nIt was in such a blank darkness underground that the sequoia seed\ngerminated and burst open under the life-impulse.  The cotyledons,\nrich in vivifying substances, gave a beginning of nourishment to the\nseedling until it was able itself to select the elements which would\nassist its growth.  The darkness cradled the budding plant, and would\ncontinue to prove its definite base after it had grown up to\nstrength.  In all these functions there was no destructiveness,\nnothing to excuse our fear of it.  The shades stand attentive about\nthe seeds of plants, as they surround the young of birds in the\nhatching egg, as they contain the foetus in its mother's womb.  In\nthe dark is the beginning of nearly all creative processes: even the\ndiamond forms itself so, in the very bowels of the earth, remote from\nus--there, in a solid blackness, it takes to itself that faceted\nshape which later will reflect the light from its every point.  These\nunfortunate shadows for which we harbour so unjust a fear!--and so\nillogical a fear, for when our cells are worn out by the strain and\nstridency of life and day it is to darkness that we turn for the\nrenewal of our vital force; and when our hearts and spirits demand\neither calm in which to rest after the blows of misfortune, or\nmending after the shock of disillusion, again it is to the shadows\nthat we have recourse, and among them that we find hope--which is\neither the salve of fresh illusions or the satisfaction of reviewing\nour obtained petitions.\n\nIn this shadow-land our pine-microcosm accumulated the strength which\nenabled it to make an essay at living.  First it absorbed the starchy\nliquid which the cotyledons had prepared for it; then it began itself\nto hunt in plant fashion for its own necessary sustenance.  Through\nall its pores the tiny rootlet sucked up the particular juices and\nessences it needed.  It grew, and divided itself into branches that\nit might tap more sub-soil with these many extensions.  It is warm\ndown there underground, and the soil was wet, for it was spring-time\noutside.  The earth was pulsating mightily with the sense of new\nmovement, was transmitting its excitement to the air.  The light of\nday and the darkness of the pit communicate with one another by\nexchanging invisible and indescribable rays.  The decaying bodies of\nmen, animals, and vegetable growths affect and influence their\ncorresponding numbers at the moment of conception and during\ngrowth--reaching them as freely through the pellucid air as through\nthe solid layers of the soil.  Life and death everywhere run into one\nanother: every beginning is an end, and everything ends only to begin\nagain.  Innumerable unknown forces come down from heaven to earth,\nand as many shoot up from earth into the blue sky, all crossing one\nanother, tangled together.  Some are destructive, some productive.\nWe cannot classify or estimate these millions of indiscoverable\nelements.  Most of them never enter our orbit; for we must remind\nourselves that there are an infinity of creations, of every sort and\nkind and lot and fate in our universe, ranging from suns to\nmicroscopic cells, each subject to tens of thousands of varying\nconditions, and tending towards an incalculable number of predestined\nends--and it is vain for our curious but purblind spirits to try to\nestimate separately or to distinguish these appalling problems, for\nour limitations in kind forbid us ever to know the infinity of\nevolutions in earth and heaven, in the depths of the seas, in the\ndepths of the earth.  It is impossible that we should ever learn what\nare the hidden powers which sway our courses, what are the unknown\nand unsearchable emanations which breathe around us, or over us, and\ngive us in hardly perceptible fashion a sense of confused joy, a\nvague sadness, or some heedless inexplicable fear.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER 4\n\n_Contrasts which are not Contrasts_\n\nOn the earth it was spring: and the excitement of it drove\nunderground.  Our sprouting seed was caught up in this frenzy of\nliving, expanded itself, and pushed downwards and upwards in a double\nmovement, under cover of that odd buckler, the pileorhiza.  The light\nattracted it; but at the same time it plunged deeper into the night,\nfor there it found hidden sympathies, and encouragements which made\nit fierce and greedy.  It grew enormously, draining to itself the\nscattered nourishment about it.  If other existences were starved\nthereby, so much the worse for them.\n\nNot long ago our plant was a humble seed, ready to beg its tiny life\nfrom each powerful menacing blade of grass.  To-day it was a\nsuccessful bully, drinking up all the ichor of its patch of soil: and\nsuch conduct is the general rule, even with us men.  When we are weak\nand know it, we are timid crawling things, hating all powers since\nthey seem directed against us: but let us gain a little strength, and\nwe grow proportionately rude, beating down the weaker.  So true is it\nthat evolution in nature is only a re-direction of energy.  The Eye\nwhich controls the universe really seems to have foreseen and planned\neverything; and things which appear unjust or horrible to us may\nappear so only because we do not know the full logic of their\nexistence.\n\nIt is pleasant to imagine what happens deep down in that secret\nmansion of the lower earth.  The press of life can be no less there\nthan on the face of the ground.  Yet we call it a mystery, and rank\nit with all that is beyond our sense, with that class of event which\neven our imaginations fail to visualize precisely.  If only we could\nsee the sequoia root with our eyes, or had some yet unexpressed means\nwith which to analyse or share its likes and dislikes, watch its\nbattles, follow its sorrows, its joys!  Why were we not endowed with\nsome special sense able to feel the satisfied tremor of the growing\nroot when it made contact with kindly elements in the blank night?\n\nFrom some distance, somewhere deep under the ground, a trickle of\nwater sent it refreshing vibrations, like a call.  How did our plant\ndiscover the presence of this distant and friendly liquid?  Did it\nexperience that familiar feeling of cool freshness which we men have\nnear water, which we would have felt in its place?  Yet the plant had\nno skin like ours, nor nerves, nor sense of smell.  It is a mystery\nhow it should have known things, and how it guessed where lay the\nfoodstuffs it needed, and by what resources beyond our knowledge it\nperceived their existence.  It never missed its aim, though it had to\nreach out, twist, even ramify, to get at these food-elements, and\nabsorb them.  In nature there are hundreds of such instincts, and\nsenses, and faculties, besides the feelings, or nerves, or other\nappurtenances of the flesh of which we are made.  In life there are\nthousands of unknown energies, of secret perceptions, of\nindescribable vibrations, which we never feel, and shall never know\nwhile we are what we are....\n\nYes, outside it was spring-time.  Its light and heat bathed all the\nsurface of the ground, instilling into the under-soil a whole range\nof influences to affect some of the thousands of embryos which there\ncome to life, by stages which we cannot follow, and of most of which\nwe never become aware.  Creation is so leisurely and so retiring that\nit makes little impression on us.  It is destruction which is the\nstriking thing, because it is quick and clear and violent.  An\ninstant destroys a thing which we have long seen living and\ndeveloping.  A tree many hundreds of years old is crashed down in a\nminute by lightning; in a few days a forest fire will destroy a\nforest which has existed for thousands of years; and this wanton\nannihilation instils in us a great terror, together with an\nunintelligent belief in the goddess of destruction, that savage and\nformidable power which seems to rule the world, and fills us with\ndevout awe: she seems so mighty and so bold and ruthless that we\nthink her the sole goddess of life.\n\nSuch an idea comes to us because of the limited range of our\nknowledge and perceptions, our only criteria of judgment.  In such\nconditions naturally it is the visible and tangible world which makes\nmost effect on us.  Yet we should remind ourselves that if a being\nunder our eyes passes in a second from life to death, yet in that\nsame instant millions of similar beings are being created by the\nmysterious courses of organic nature: just as while lightning is\nstriking and consuming a giant of the forest in one burning moment,\nsimultaneously millions of such trees are germinating in the fruitful\nheat of mother-earth, beyond our sphere of control.  We should note\nthat in all ways and at all times creation has the numerical\nsuperiority over destruction, whether it concerns men or animals or\nplants.  In truth we have no reason to complain that our senses have\nbeen reduced to such bare limits.  How palpitant life would be for us\nif new faculties superadded to our old gave us to see the invisible,\nto understand the occult, to apprehend like plants, to feel in\nvibrations like light, to flow abroad like seas and contemplate the\nbounds of space.\n\nLet it be enough if we record, without seeking to explain it by\nfinding a parallel in our equipment, how singularly efficient our\nplant was in insinuating its roots where it would.  With the aid of\nits pileorhiza it passed not merely through crumbling soil, but\nthrough stony strata, plaster, and wood.  Another mystery, this, how\nso soft a substance could penetrate hard bodies, which we burst\nthrough only by means of a great effort of strength, using tools yet\nharder.  The sequoia root, dipping downward in one direction,\nthrusting upward in another, without external aid split obstacles\nagainst which we have to employ iron and stone: and at last one fine\nmorning its first shoot pierced the top layer of soil to salute the\nsun.\n\nAt this second the plant was, to our eyes, at last born.  We commonly\npass over its hardest battles, those conditioned by the circumstances\nof its origin.  In reality it was while yet beneath the ground that\nthe little sequoia tree experienced the mother-care of those kindly\nshades without which it could not have come to life: but few of us\ntake note of that.  We so commonly put the effect before the cause\nand the success before the effort.  Yet our little plant went down as\nmuch as it went up, with roots very like its crests, though the one\nstruck upward towards the sun, and the other struck downward through\nthe night.\n\nI would say that this inexplicable symmetry is one of the laws which\ngovern the seen, and probably also the unseen, world.  Ideas, beings,\nthings, phenomena of all kinds exhibit to us much the same\nbeginnings, similar developments, and parallel endings.  This fact we\ncan grasp only piecemeal, not in its whole; but it is clear that\nalways there is an analogy between extremes.  We know that\nplant-roots are like their heads.  Dawn and twilight (opposed limits\nof a natural event) are like one another: the same pallid colours,\nthe same freshness, the same effect of unambitious calm.  Sunrise and\nsunset, respectively the appearance and the disappearance of our\nday-star, glare at us with a like extravagance of noisy red.  Old age\nand childhood, the two poles of human life, resemble one another in\ntheir feebleness and weak vitality.  Our great joys are silent as our\ngreat sorrows; and the ecstasy of love is not far from the frenzy of\nhate.  Nature is re-born in spring-tide, and falls sadly asleep when\nautumn closes: and yet these two seasons are very like--showers of\nrain and gusty winds, shot across with the same weak rays of yellow\nlight.\n\nWe find this odd likeness of contrasts not merely in visible nature\nand in life, but also in the most subtle abstractions of the\nspiritual world.  We expect a great happiness as anxiously as a great\nmisfortune, and when we do things our first conception, and the\nmemory which follows it, trace in our minds the same sort of hazy\ncontour in fleeting neutral tint.  The nescience of our birth is like\nour death's.\n\nOh! we know very well _how_ some of these resemblances are\ncaused--thanks to the action of the simple laws of physical\nnature--but our spirit fails when we ask _why_ these analogies should\nappear with so strange and universal a regularity.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER 5\n\n_Caught up into the Stream of Life_\n\nIn the summer when the sky was blue and the air diaphanous, in autumn\nwith its melancholy mist, in winter when the wind blew cold and clean\nand sharp, our tree lived on and prospered with the passing years.\nFor now it had become a tree, a giant sequoia pine.  It stood a\nlittle clear of a forest in an open space, and so looked solitary.\nIts head towered over the surrounding country from its place in the\nblue and green opalescent gulf of heaven.  The forest whose leaves\ndanced tremblingly before its feet was made up of quite other trees:\ndelicate lively things, of middle but swift height, and\nthin-branched, so that the wind and the sunlight wove patterns easily\nthrough their frail screen.\n\nAgainst this background the seasons passed leisurely, the complete\nyear seeming swifter than its parts: so that if an ever-living spirit\ncould have fixed itself deep within the fibres of the giant trunk\nwhile the waves of time broke about it, and counted them as they\ncame, it would have found centuries fly past as lightly as single\nyears.  If our faculties and standards of perception had been\napplicable to the pine, how beautiful we, in its place, would have\nthought the world!  We would have noted the warmth, the sense of\nspace, its limpid clarity: also the colours and shapes and scents of\nthings; but did the tree know how splendid was the scene about it?\nAt times we think that it must have been sensitive to certain things.\nYet surely it could not see the distant hill rolling away to the\nskyline, gay and clean and bright in summer, but pale and solemn in\nwinter.  It could not admire the endless plain or the river winding\nnear.  It paid no attention to the azure sky in which it bathed\nitself, nor could it feel--at least not in any human sense--the\ncaressing wind, the rough embraces of the frost, the cool breath of\nthe water.  Likewise it could not taste the open air, or know the day\nflashing round it, or be soothed by the calming shades of night.  It\nwas unable to feel, see, hear, or taste movement and light and noise\nand flavours, as we can; yet it received impressions to which we are\nblank, and united itself ardently or voluptuously or uneasily with\nthe other elements of its existence.  It would require a manufacture\nof new words (to fit sensations foreign to our nature) before our\npresent understandings could appreciate plant-loves and hatreds, and\nthe things which please them or give them discomfort.\n\nOur tree became part of its whole environment, of the hills, of the\nplain, of the atmosphere and scents of things, by a constant\ninterchange of matter.  Its sap was drawn from the depths of the\nearth, and rose unchecked through each breathing cell up to the crest\nof the tree.  It flowed rapidly about even the very smallest pores,\nand thence from the topmost twig fell again as fast (but this time\nrich with new ingredients) to the lowest root.  We can easily gauge\nthe chemical content of these ingredients, but nevertheless the\nabsorption on their passage of the nutritive particles remains a\nmystery.\n\nThey are drawn from all the elements of which the world is made up,\neven in its most opposed forms: and the various species of active\nthings, whether men or animals or plants, select those actual ones\nproper for their nourishment, after their kind, and attract them\nthrough space and time, through all the multitude of encompassing\nforces, from solid matter, from vapours or from liquids, whatever\ntheir appearance and whatever their composition.  The sequoia, for\ninstance, drew to itself what was qualified to make rough its red\nbark, to harden the fibres of its stem, to make smooth the green\ncomposition of its needles; and drew them from the encircling air,\nfrom the blue rays of light, from the mist of waters, from every\nmotion and scent about it.  From the same vast whole, made up of\nthousands of dissimilar bodies, the birds draw their plumage, the\ntortoises their shells, the worms their rings, the flowers their\npetals, and humankind their complexions, their blood and flesh.\n\nWe are fully aware that these substances are all carbon in divers\nforms; but that raises the fresh question, when we ponder it, whether\nthe whole universe is not of a single sameness--a vision of\nmind-wracking infinity repeating itself in a perpetual changeless\nseries? and that might lead us to stand in astonished awe before a\nnature which can make a bone, or pearl-shell, or a wing-case, or a\nclaw, or an eyelash from the same elements whether they are of the\nair we breathe, of the light shining from our eyes, or of any other\ntransformation of appearance or taste.  However, even if the matter\nbe the same, the forces which cause it to take shape are infinite.\nHow many must be the sources of energy which together compose the\ncomplete eternal mirror-disk of life, in which from time to time we\ncatch glimpses of vague forms, as it whirls on its mad course,\nbearing away worlds too big for our failing minds to comprehend, or\ntoo small for our blunted senses to distinguish?\n\nAbove all, this dazzling multiple disk teaches us motion and harmony:\nthat is to say, labour and love.  The largest planet like the\nsmallest atom exists by combination and by movement.  Look upon the\nmillion needles of the sequoia pine, how they everlastingly breathed\nin and out, drawing gases and water from the air and returning\nothers.  The stomata never stopped work for an instant.  Within the\nseeds the sap worked as unceasingly.  Nothing ever dwells in absolute\ninertia for a moment anywhere.  The atmosphere vibrates, light\npierces, hearts beat, water flows, the molecules of crystals build\nthemselves together, the stars revolve, the air stirs, the darkness\nis propitious to growth: through everything is spun the cord of love\nand labour.\n\nPerhaps, when we contemplate the tireless labour of the bees and ants\nas they run here and there, and reinforce one another in an endless\nseries of the same acts, with apparently their sole purpose in the\nnext generation--perhaps a dismal weariness steals over us at the\nsight of such everlasting monotony of labour, and at a feeling that\ntheir futile efforts much resemble our own; but we may legitimately\nremind ourselves that our ignorance of the complete scheme of things\ninhibits or at least vitiates our judgment; also that the chain of\nsuccession, from father to son in an endless series stretching away\nto infinity, is Nature's first law.\n\nJust as nothing isolated happens in nature, so nothing exists which\nis isolated or peculiar.  What we call our individuality is only a\ncongeries of cells: just as what we call an adventure is a complex of\nevents tending towards a single defined end.  It would be wrong for\nus to pick out and treat of any single one of the tribulations of the\npine-seed on its described huge journey, except in relation to the\nresult of the history, the mighty tree towering like a red pillar\nfour hundred feet into the air.  Likewise with our storied lives.  We\nwill find nothing irregular in them if we realize that they existed\nbefore they became patent, and that our minds became aware of them\nonly when they developed in some apparently fresh phase to which we\nwere peculiarly sensitive.  A good example is the ray of light which\nleft a star centuries ago, but which we notice only as it enters our\nlimited field of vision.\n\nThe least important event has a history going back far beyond our\nmind's reach: we cannot fix the start of any thing, or of any\ncreature, or of any circumstance.  This enormous tree, whose shadow\nfalls across my book, and whose history we are tracing ... what began\nit?  How did the class of giant pine arise?  The most evanescent\nhappening carries back through adventure upon adventure to infinity,\nand if we could trace back everything to its first cause, probably we\nwould be astonished to find small consequences to things which we\nthink magnificent, and would find that our grandest created things\ntook their rise in ordinary and insignificant circumstances.\n\nWe may lawfully presume that the past has been universal, and that\nthe future will be the same; for probably everything happened in the\neternity which preceded us, and everything will certainly happen in\nthe limitless time which will succeed our paltry moments.\n\nWhere do we come from?  What was our first shape?  Academic questions\nthese, perhaps of no great urgency, but none the less difficult for\nus to picture.  We feel distinctly enough what is good or bad in our\nexperiences of the moment; yet we cannot in the least evade our\ndestinies; and our impotence supplies us with a reason for casting\nout despair, and accepting with dignity what fate offers.\n\nSeconds build up into minutes, and minutes into hours, and these into\nthe days of our life; and so also far-fetched trifles accumulate into\noccasions.  It depends on our circumstances whether they seek us out\nor whether we go to them.  Every being possessing activity, that is,\nwhich has a relation with space and a temporary faculty of volition,\nmoves towards change as change moves towards him.  The mobile beings,\nsuch as men and beasts and birds, as often as they move, make\nprogress towards some small or large point in their history.  Their\nchange of position makes them encounter the unexpected, which is\nitself perhaps coming towards them.  Our pine-tree, however, being of\nthe plant class, was rooted in one place, and had to attend its\nchanges there.  For of course its history was full of change.  In\nseed-shape it had wandered across the world, its devious course lying\nsometimes on the surface of the ground, sometimes in the water,\nsometimes in the air.  Now, being a tree, its wanderings were over;\nbut its normal life yet varied nearly from day to day.  The scene (to\nour eyes changeless) in which it stood no doubt changed without our\nbeing able to see the differences.  We have no bark or needles or\nsap, and cannot therefore enter into the feelings of the tree which\nwith them knew how clouds modulated its light, how the passing wind\nvaried its scent and texture according to the distance or direction\nfrom which it came, how the rain-drops tasted so one time and so\nanother time, their very elements seeming different according as the\nseasons varied the sensitiveness of the great lonely tree.\n\nAnyhow, we should remember that with plants it will not be as with\nus.  Lacking our faculties, they may yet be richer than us in other\ndirections, endowed with senses whose deficiency in ourselves we\ncannot perceive: and perhaps even things have their senses.  There\nmay really be \"tears in things.\"  It would be an attractive doctrine\nthat the energies which affect inanimate things may affect them in\nsensible degrees, that the universe (which is a rounded whole) obeys\nthe same laws in forms which change according to circumstance, but\nremain alike in force and means.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER 6\n\n_The Law of Balance_\n\nHow lustreless and same the passage of time appears when we review it\nin our memory! but how uncertain and varied it is when we live it\nmoment by moment, leaning out of each second to encounter the next!\nLikewise with the life of the great tree.  Its sap on the daily round\nof work may have had fresh pleasures and discomforts at each\nrevolution; but the tree's life seemed to have slipped past in a tame\nmonotony when taken in a period of thirty or forty centuries.  Yet it\nmay be that the sequoia felt the seasons change about it, and that\nthe times and scenes (so constant to our eyes) in which it lived\naffected it variously, just as its great outline may not have been\nwithout influence on its own country.  One can picture the huge\nreddish spout leaping up into the air, with a hazy network of\nhundreds of branches about it.  Its head seemed to be lost in the\nblue.  Its bole was twenty-five paces about, but against its enormous\nheight such a thickness seemed slight, and the whole tree had an air\nof slender grace, quite unlike other great trees, as, for instance,\nthe baobab, whose trunk might be thicker than a sequoia trunk, but\nwhose height would be incomparably less.\n\nLike all conifers, the root-system of the sequoia was not elaborate.\nOf course it had great roots, and many of them, and luxuriant\nones--but not to compare with the tree's size.  Here also one may\ntrace the all-seeing Eye, having regard for universal harmony.  If\ntrunk and roots were in due proportion, the tree's appetite would be\nempowered to satisfy its hunger by ravaging an immense area of\nground.  Its roots would exhaust the vital essences from a wide\ncircle, and reduce it to a desert.  So the principle of balance\nenters, and applies itself to the pine-giant: and we find if we\nsearch diligently into nature that its greatest creatures have their\nweak spots, and the feeblest things of the world have their\nunexpected means of defence.\n\nExamples of this law are well found in the fantastic prehistoric\ntime.  Through its dense jungle rolled a nightmare shape, a reptile\n(called the Diplodocus) unnaturally huge, perhaps a hundred feet long\nand proportionally tall.  On the end of its prolonged neck was a\ngrotesque little head, in which stared two glassy stupid eyes.  The\nbeast would seem to have been doomed to a miserable life, for to\nnourish its demensurate body would require nearly unlimited food, and\nit had only a tiny mouth, able to pick up a spoonful at a time.  So\npoor Diplodocus passed his whole life chewing leaves, and had no time\noff for sleep or holiday.  He could do nothing all the while but eat,\nand so by the law of compensation his greatness was brought low.  If\nhis head had been as good as his body, and if instead of being only a\ngrass-eating lizard he had learned to eat meat, then nothing alive\ncould have resisted him, and he would have depopulated his radius of\naction.\n\nThis harmony in life, this astonishing foresight watching over matter\nmakes one think.  Every source of energy in the world has\nirrefragible bounds marked out for it.  The curse of Diplodocus seems\nto have fallen on our modern whale, whose strength would make the sea\nbarren of other life if its gullet had not been made too small to\nswallow them.  What a danger for the rest of the world that other\nmammal, the elephant, might have been with his union of strength and\nintelligence, had his nature not been made so peaceable, and the\nperiod of gestation so long!\n\nLions, tigers and panthers are fierce and powerful, but have found a\npitiless exterminator in man.  The larger felines have ever been the\nmost tempting game for hunters, who pursue them with particular zest:\nand things are always so, everywhere.  Men give infinite reasons or\npretexts, on which they think (or say they think) they acted: but\nbehind all these we can trace the constant operation of an immutable\nlaw, to which their obedience is implicit.\n\nThis terrible law of compensations cuts often across our brief\nfreedom--across those periods when we fancy ourselves all-powerful,\nmasters of the event.  We might really be so, if the Eye was not\nwatching and regulating the smallest details of creation: but as it\nis, this law which checks excessive strength comes into operation\nagainst us, using ourselves as its own means.  It may be for this\nreason that we are tormented by drugs or drinks or other plagues; for\nmost non-human beings are comparatively free of them, and they cause\nany number of weaknesses and harmful complications, fatal to the\nhealth of society.  As a crowning debilitant we have our\nman-devouring wars.\n\nFor it really seems that they must be half-divine, these terrible\nevents which impose themselves upon us, as though at the dictates of\nsuperhuman authority.  If fate did not decree them how could these\nwars yet pour out the life-blood of our peoples, since man has always\ncondemned them with the whole force of his reason?\n\nNo one, whether the greatest conqueror or the most commonplace\nindividual, has ever dared to speak of war without exposing its sorry\ncharacter: unless he curses it: and such is the plainest common\nsense.  There leap to our minds a thousand reasons against war,\nwhenever we need them.  Only when the crisis comes and the clash of\npeoples is prepared, then human beings savagely acclaim it.  They\nburn with the sense of battle, a madness which comes upon them from\nwithout and masters them, so that they can speak only with its voice.\nJust as the roots of plants have the pileorhiza to stay their first\nfeebleness and let them fight out their rivalries with the other\nbeings of the under-world, so when war begins this obscure law\ninjects us with patriotism, a draught which gives us strength and\ncourage to support the miseries of its train.\n\nDaily it is said, \"War would be easily prevented.  All that is\nneedful is for every man alive to forswear it.  If at the same moment\nwe all refused to make a move against our kind, these fires consuming\nmen would be at once put out.\"  Yes, but exactly this apparently easy\nagreement and common action never happen.  When the moment comes for\narmed slaughter men are unanimous only in fierce support of pretexts\nfor beginning it.  When the storm has passed we are astounded and\nrather horrified to look back on our bloodthirsty record, and like a\nriver sinking back into its bed after a flood, we return gradually to\nour habitual peace and quietude:--too late, alas! for the will of the\ngods has been done and humanity has paid its bloody tribute to their\nlaw of death.  At the next date of bleeding the whole round will\nbegin again, just as before.\n\nSo Diplodocus' little head, his point of weakness, may be made a\nsymbol of this malady of man.  And the reason why we should be\nsubjected to this inflexible law?  No doubt that our too-great\nstrength be brought down ... but it remains a question whether the\ntoo-great strength is because our numbers are over-many for the earth\nto bear, or because we are near discovering and exploiting the\nworking of the greater powers of nature.  It may also be the law of\nchecks and balances pursuing its course against all excessive\nstrengths, which gives the riches and resources of this world to\nordinary people, rather than to those mighty spirits with character\nenough to overturn their generations.  One can imagine what might\nhave happened had the great scholars or thinkers whose writings\nrevolutionized life had in their hands the power of a despot or the\nwealth of Croesus.  \"You can't have everything\" is the hackneyed\nphrase in which common sense has tried to express one of the most\ndisturbing truths of the universe.  However much it may appear so,\nnowhere is any excess of power allowed to disturb the balance of\nthings.  Absolute equality is of course equally out of the question,\nfor harmony is based always on the union of unlike things.\n\nOne pine-tree could observe this law working in its sphere of life,\nthrough the thousands of years for which it stood there.  Generation\nafter generation of birds and insects followed one another on its\nstem and branches.  Some days were dismal, others glorious, just as\nsome hours were unprofitable and others rich.  The light and warmth\nwere not always divided to it in equal part.  Underground the\nmoisture did not always refresh its mazy roots in fair degree.\nClouds often veiled its blue sky: the seasons made that swelling hill\nbare and sad as often as they made it smile with waving green.  The\ngiant tree saw its needles grow from freshness into pallor, and then\nfall, thousands of times.  Some of its branches for no visible reason\ngrew splendidly, while others, also for no visible reason, remained\nsmall and stunted.  Yet still its life, as a whole, was lived in\ntune, as ours are to our content, however discordant the individual\nmoments.  A single ray of light is enough to scatter the darkness:\nand when we think of the surroundings in which the giant lived, the\nidea comes that perhaps we would fear death less if it were not for\nthat haunting picture of our corpses rotting slowly in the darkness\nunderground.  We might live more in love with death if we knew that\nour dust would remain under the sun, to change and re-model itself in\nplant-fashion, like those yellow leaves which wither and fall before\nwinter comes.  It would assuage our minds if we could think that\nafter our end we would live yet in the shimmering day, absorbed\nparticles of that great life-filled space this side the limitless\nether of the stars.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER 7\n\n_Metamorphoses_\n\nAs space creates all things out of its own substance only to devour\nthem again at last, so time which itself cannot move or change allots\nto everything its span of life.  Our hours and days are within us,\nand it is the revolution of the globe, and not time, which makes the\nseasons.  Yet beings and things succeed one another, and their\ncourses give us an illusion that the age grows old.  It is a\nconvenient figure, for it is good to say that the days slip past and\nthe seasons wheel round, each in turn.\n\nOnce more spring made green the mighty tree.  The sun and the winds\nfretted its newly-budded branches.  The giant began to transform\nitself.  Like last year, and the thousands of years before, the sap\nmade buds which pushed out into leaves, into flowers, and at last\ninto fruits from which the future seeds would be born.  Each spring\ninaugurated an ascending change, to be followed, this year as in the\ndead years, by a descending change.\n\nSo the sap in its evolution took the common way of all life's forces.\nIt rose towards its highest forms, in turn becoming leaf and flower\nand fruit: and then it fell away in hard, dry, woodenish particles.\nThrough this history of changing shape passes all we know, ideas as\nwell as things.  Even our feelings are not exempt.  Everything within\nand without us alters and re-forms itself: so that there is no\nchangeless situation, nothing which is for ever exactly the same.  In\nthe indestructible and turbulent race of matter one universal essence\nis working in a fixed direction: and if the tree-sap changed into\nwood, after having triumphally been green leaf and shining flower, so\ndoes implacable fate lead our component cells through exquisite\nchildhood into splendid youth, only to change us at last into\ntottering and wasted creatures of old age.\n\nThe elements alter their shape through time and space.  In the same\nlight, in the same conditions and circumstances, flowers bloom and\nfade, our hair turns from its first dark or fair colour into silver,\nour eyes lose their early fire, our firm red flesh goes dry and\nshrivelled.  These changes happen to the same drop of sap in the\nplant world, and to the same tissue in the animal world.  In the\nunexplored world of instinct our senses follow a similar evolution.\nOur enthusiasm for something or other springs to life, lasts awhile,\nand then chills into complete detachment.  \"Love is akin to hate,\"\nsays a proverb: but really the two states run together.  Our\nindifference or our dislike is often born of an exhausted regard:\notherwise would we so often come to hate what we once enjoyed?  No,\nthese rising and falling changes are not confined to plants, but are\na general part of evolution, in material as in immaterial things.\n\nSpringtime, however, with its thrill towards active life prevailed\nonce again upon the earth.  The sap was boiling up in the inmost\npores of the giant tree.  It was shaken in mysterious travail,\nsharing, in its tree-fashion, the corresponding sensations of living\nbeings: but expressing them of course very differently.  Its\npassionate re-birth was shown in the perfumes which it released, in\nthe trembling of its branches, in its needles flashing silver in the\nmoonlight, or golden in the full light of the sun.  Yet these\nenigmatical eddies were those of the new year, the same which make\nour blood hot and our desires keen.\n\nThe universal mysterious analogy of all life again forces itself on\nour reeling minds.  These millions of shoots and needles in the pine\nwere produced with such profusion only to grow old and die, like\nlives passing away, while the great tree stood steady in the midst of\nthem, rooted and intact.  Our nerve cells and tissues in a like\nfashion renew themselves day and night, without our giving them a\nthought, so absorbed are we in \"living our lives\" to our full bent.\nThe pine-tree lived on the subsidiary lives of each of its utricles,\nand exhausted something of its reserve force with each generation of\nthem passed by: and so do we grow old with each of their deaths as\nthe tiny cells in us die without our heeding.\n\nLife seems to whirl like a top, getting apparently the momentum for a\nnew spin from each spin past, but actually failing steadily towards\nits final rest.  Each slipping moment leaves us inevitably nearer to\nour end, however it may seem to give us spring and key for fuller\nexistence.  Especially in spring-time does a new life seem to be\nworking in us.  A mute exhilaration flows through all our nerves,\nmaking them tingle like the needles of the giant pine.  Beings and\nthings open in one great vibration, whose repercussion is felt even\nin the dark places underground.  Subtle aspirations emanate from here\nand there, and cross one another confusedly: yet in their varied and\nvarying shapes whirling aloft in the air, inspiring living creatures\nor burgeoning in plants, they are only multiple aspects of one\ncentral influence.  These very diverse expressions are all products\nof one faculty, vivified by the same ichor.\n\nA puff of wind stirred the twigs of the forest giant.  The sun was\nsetting in a western sky heaped with purple and violet and rosy\nclouds.  There was a confused movement of many forms of life in the\ndarkling wood, whose smallness beside it made the sequoia tree seem a\ndisproportionate sentinel.  Twilight slid into darkness, dissipated\nearly by a silver moon.  A cloud of insects rose up the reddish trunk\nof the pine.  They glittered or suggested red and blue and emerald\ngreen, blended or particoloured.  Their tiny feet swarmed up the rude\nbark silently.  On the ground other tiny insects gleamed greenly\nthrough the grass, or darkened its sandy surface with queer black\nshadows.  They paired, in obedience to the instinct which had made\nthe dainty butterflies all the afternoon flutter together intimately.\nThe echo of croaking frogs came keenly from the distance, through the\nmyriad smells of evening.\n\nEverything seemed possessed, reeling with excitement, and with a\ngrave disturbance of spirit, before the might of this hetero-sexual\ninstinct, which drives male upon female, revives the splendour of\nbirds' plumage, sharpens the note of frogs, distils the scents of\nflowers, causes the shallow stream to laugh aloud, makes the\nmeadow-grasses to dance, and the tigers to roar with excess of life:\nwhich is able also to twine serpents in a slimy embrace, and to whirl\nthe deadly scorpions in a loathsome ecstasy.  It seems so universal,\nthis omnipotent force, able to run down the moonbeams, to flutter in\nthe wind, to wave with the grasses, to thrill through all the\natmosphere.  It makes human beings cling together in quivering\ncouples, jerking to the pull of its nameless demand: and truly seems\none spirit in these many shapes, an imperious will which in all these\nvaried pairings is shadowing out the frame of the master-law of\nreproduction.  Even the elements appear subject to its sway: for this\npassion which binds one to another of a kind that every sort may see\nsomething of universality in its single mood, may it not be this\nwhich puts the little more of glory in the sunlight, that extra\nsoftness in the air of night, that repose in open space, that richer\nmusic in the waves, that purer purity in heaven, and on earth that\nsustained thrill?\n\nFrom head to foot the giant tree responded to the new warmth of\nsentiment in nature.  While the sun shone the birds had mated in its\nboughs.  Now, in the moonshine, the insects had their turn, and clung\ntogether silently in the vague shimmering mist of their brilliant\ncolours.  Deep in the soil the tap-roots of plants swelled up in\npleasure: in the air floated a sea of all imaginable scents,\nimpalpable unseen messengers through space of the universal fluid\nwhich betrays itself to our sense of smell on the one side, and on\nanother side in the strange lights of lovers' eyes.  If we remember\nhow the loved one would tell us her feelings and her inmost thoughts\nby a mere glance, then it will not seem to us far-fetched that plants\nhold converse in the perfumes which they scatter in the air.  These\ninvisible and intangible but powerful scents, which spread abroad to\ninvite insects and to stupefy us with nebulous desires, seem to play\nmuch the same role as the magnetism of our looks, that other strange\npower which is able by shuffling the blues and blacks and greens of\nour eyes to express love or indifference or hate; and without any\nchange of shape or colour can reassure with gentleness or paralyse\nwith terror, conveying the most subtle shades of desire and passion\nand command.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER 8\n\n_What the Moon Saw_\n\nMeanwhile there were showering down on earth the beams of that moon,\nmirror and transmitter of the sun, which conveys to us its light\nwithout its heat.  From the distance came the splashing of water: and\non the river bank, where it was nearest to the tree and within sight,\nlay a man and woman.  They were naked, and the water was dripping\nslowly from their bronzed bodies.  They lay aside by side, and the\nlow murmur of their voices and their stifled kisses filled the near\nair about.  Beyond and around them eddied the confused noises of the\nfields and woods, the scents of evening made lively by the cool damp\nair, the brightness of the moon's shining on the silvan landscape, a\nselection of all the sounds and shapes and tints and flavours in the\nworld.  The contagion of universal love had caught the lovers, making\ntheir eyes hard, their blood hot, their lips red.  The everlasting\nuniversal thrill which makes the flowers burst into bloom, which\nmakes the insects glitter and the birds sing, was upon these two,\nflinging them into a mutual passionate embrace.\n\nThey were just another instance of the immortal lust of conjoined\nsexes.  Their sighs rustled between their lips like the wind in the\ngrass, they sobbed together like the breaking sea, their flesh\ntingled with their blood as did the fibres of the forest giant with\nsap.  Their inchoate and always unfulfilled desires took wing in the\nclear blue evening and became part of the immense and complex harmony\nof a thousand strains which has reigned since the beginning of the\nworlds, in the ether, to the stars, about the stars, beyond them,\neven to the confines of illimitable space.\n\nThe great pine-tree in its six thousand years had many times seen\nsubstances mating and beings marrying, and was able to record that\nthese two young naked humans were exactly like the thousands of other\ncouples whose loves it had witnessed since that distant time when as\na tender plant it had pushed its shy and timid way towards the blue.\n\nFor sixty centuries generation of man had succeeded generation\nbeneath the tree, but whatever differences there might have been in\ntheir external circumstances or in the superficial accessories of\ntheir state, always when in love their couples used to embrace naked\non such spring evenings as this, with the same ceremony and as\necstatically as the pair to-day.  The forest giant from its lofty\ncrest was thus able to establish that mankind had remained\nessentially the same through the six thousand years.\n\nLove is the strongest of our passions, but also that which we hide\nthe deepest: whereas we exhibit our ambitions, our pride, our greed,\nour frenzies, openly.  Yet when love does take possession of us it\nsharpens and exalts our dullest, remotest faculties to the height:\nbut it is a moot point whether we are right to believe it exclusively\nour work, a sentiment evoked by our own means.  There is a disturbing\npossibility that it may be imposed on us regardless of our will.  We\nare not able to extinguish it, nor to fan it: for its potent causes\nlie deep beyond our sight, and are fleeting.  We often see men\ncarried away by a passion for some one who is not in the least their\nideal, and see this passion grow greater or smaller without valid\ncause.  Insignificant trifles, and impressions of the apparent\nslightest sometimes have enormous consequences in our lives.  Love is\ncalled up or frightened away by the faintest ghost of a memory, by\nthe waking impression of a forgotten dream, by some homely detail.\nThe faculty of love has been transmitted through our generations for\nthousands of years, unchanged: for the tremor which excited our\nforbears in their caves was, in its kind, of the intensity of the\nembrace of the sexes to-day.\n\nThe truth would seem to be that in love we obey an eternal, general\nand boundless law.  In our conceit we think that no emotion is\ncomparable to the fever of passionate mankind.  Yet what can we know\nof the particular sensations possessing inhuman couples? such as the\nfervour of a plant in seed, or that colossal attraction which drags\nplanets into the orbits of their suns.  Our love-dramas and kisses\nand excitements are mere examples of the universal spasm.\n\nLet us return to the man and woman within sight of the upper branches\nof the pine as they lay supine on the green bank of the river taking\ntheir ease after happy exertions.  The slight sound of their\nvoluptuous sighs had died away down the breeze.  The vibrations of\ntheir meeting flesh had gone abroad through the blue evening, with\nthe beaded moisture evaporating from their skins, and the heating\nscents of awakened sex, to become part of the endless waves of ether\nset up by the motions of the stars, by the odorous love-excitements\nof birds and beasts and reptiles, by the pollen of seeding plants.\nOf course the embracing couple did not know it: they knew nothing of\nthe movement of the Spheres and their Rivers of life, nor of their\ncomponent cells nor of the uncounted tribes of germs living within\ntheir bodies.  Yet at the very crisis of the amorous passion the\ninfinitely small no doubt bear their part in it to some degree, just\nas the lovers in their act have contributed to the harmony of the\nuniverse.  We must try to think of ourselves existing as it were\ndetached, hanging between an external medley of forces beyond our\nken, and an internal current of life equally inappreciable by our\nsenses.  We seem to become sensitive to exterior sensation only\nlocally, in the parts immediately affected.  When lovers kiss the\ndelight of it attacks mouth and heart and spirit alone.  We never\nthink that our arms or shoulders may also be concerned.\n\nYet on reflection it would seem incontestable that the mere\nlocalization of the conscious emotion cannot prevent its being shared\ngenerally by our whole being.  The kiss, though expressed only by our\nlips, is a product of the vitality of all our organs: and likewise in\neach of our actions we, from our tiny sector of the world, share in\nthe universal harmony, though we cannot know the extent of our\ncontribution nor trace its course through the clash of external\nforces.\n\nIt is a grave thought that in this indescribable whole the separate\nitems of activity undergo an identical evolutionary process.  When\nthe sky was blue, in the piercing sunlight of a fragrant summer-time,\nthe forest giant attained its highest pitch, as its branches were\nrich and supple with sap.  Then came days of decline.  Under a feeble\nsun and a lack-lustre sky the air grew cold and faint: and the tree\nentered on a phase of decline, slow at first but increasing in speed\ntill almost precipitate.  Declines and falls have also (like all\nelse) their charts of intensity growing to a climax and falling away\ninevitably thereafter.  A stone flung into the air has a history like\nthe giant tree.  It shoots up, up, to its highest point, dwells on\nit, as it were, for a fraction of a second, and then turns to fall,\ngently at first, but later coming down with an increasing rush.  This\nchange up and change down seem to be one of the prime laws of life\nand of matter and of energy, from the boundless existence of the\nconstellations to the atoms and the inexpressible complexities of\nnature.  Everything seems subject to such a process and our\nimaginations cannot conceive anything exempt, or anything which will\never be exempt.  A stone flung up and falling, a branch budding and\ngrowing bare, a fire flaring up and going out, a sentiment being\nborn, developing and dying, everything good or bad in events and in\nthings, in the animal creation, and in plants, in suns and in\nparticles, in everything that is or happens, exhibit obedience to\nthis universal law of change, growth and decay.  Detached atoms\nretain the character and share the fate of their former whole.\n\nThe lovers on the sloping river-bank near the giant tree were thus\nreproducing the universal harmony, in their narrow and temporary\nharmony, as they clipped and twined together in rhythmical\ncounterchange of their inmost emotions.  They were so much larger\nthan the insects which shone red in the sunset or turned green in the\nmoonshine: they were so much smaller than the tree: yet in their\ndegree and kind they were in accord with the course of nature, as\nexpressed in the force which linked the fireflies and made the tree\nbear seed.  They partook of the ambitions which coming from the mists\nof time and from the chaos of space make planets revolve in their\norbits and electrons whirl together: and if our insatiable curiosity\nmakes us seek to know, however dimly, what is going on up there or\ndown there, let us tell ourselves that we are part of all that is,\nthat we obey the very laws which govern alike the unimaginable whole\nand its hugest components, and that therefore our infinitesimal\nexperience if we can expand or contract it indefinitely may guide us\nas to the experiences both of the greatest and of the smallest.\n\nPoor loving couple whom we have left sobbing with pleasure in the\nharmonious and fragrant evening-light!  It was written that their\ntransport should die, like all else in this world, and that a falling\ncadence should close it, making its course one with those of the suns\nand trees.  The conviction that our joys are transient may make us\nsad: but we can draw consolation from the idea that all the dwellers\nin chaos are within the law.  By taking thought we can make strong\nour souls, and still them, with the certain knowledge of our utter\nhelplessness.\n\nYes, the moment was good for the man and woman by the tall and\nsplendid tree, as they throbbed together in the new sensitiveness of\ntheir overcharged emotion: but remorselessly decline will follow on\nthe climax, not merely in the case of the love that grows faint, but\nfor the summer which must yield place to winter, for youth on which\nold age is waiting, for the spray of water which rises to its height\nonly to fall, for the suns which to-day dazzle us, but for some few\nten thousand years are doomed to a slow expiry till they shall go\nround and round their unyielding prisons of space in blind stiff\nloneliness.  The spiral of being leaps up rapidly to its brilliant\napogee, and then runs down again into obscurity while the ring-waves\nof each action expand ever outward in the infinite.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER 9\n\n_When the Corselet Snaps_\n\nMore pine kernels had sprouted near by, and the great tree was now\nkept company by other russet trunks, tens of centuries younger, but\nundergoing the same development.  They grew and changed against the\nsame background as the older tree, extracting the nourishment which\nformed their shape and colour, sap and scent, from the same area.\nAgain the law of perpetuity asserted itself in creation.\n\nNear the giant a young tree was fainting and failing.  It had not the\nstrong straight shape of the other conifers, nor their sharp, shining\nneedles.  Its current of life was crossed, confused.  Its sap did not\nfill its roots and branches, its wood was unhealthy: while on its\ngnarled trunk grew and increased year by year a huge boss of dead\nmatter, whose weight seemed to crush the whole organism.  The stomata\nlaboured feebly in their task of collecting food from the environs,\nand so reduced the tree's vitality that it felt no thrill from the\nbounty of spring or summer, while hardly was there any flavour in the\nweak sap which crept drop by drop through the sick veins of its\nbranches.  It seemed tired and faint-hearted in its travail, this\nsap, like an aged workman: and the tree's whole attitude and effect\nwas that of old age, of a failing constitution such as marks the last\nstages of life in trees long past their prime.\n\nFor this young sequoia was sick.  Its soggy utricles made no response\nto the new winds of spring-tide, and were as insensible to sunlight\nand to the rays of a cloudless sky.  The fine weather which made the\ngiant so brave and fresh in foliage had no effect on this.  Its slow,\nsad invalid existence made it more and more like a tree whose cadence\nwas closing with its pale, fagged flagging tissue.\n\nTo an external observer its sickness was as though the coat of mail\nwhich linked in and protected its life had parted, and let all its\nfibres grow odd and wrong.  The course of development had been\nbroken, and the shattered rhythm had thrown out even the smallest\ncells.  Their disordered whole was sad and sick with incurable\ndisease, a premature old age with its petulant inconsequence: and if\nthis sickness might be called premature age, age might be called a\nslow sickness.\n\nPlants and creatures have their illnesses, things their\nmalformations, planets no doubt their disasters: and since the fates\nof puissant things are those of futile things may we presume that\nthere are mishaps also for the ordered whole?  The analogies between\nstars and the microscopic dust of chemical particles impress\nthemselves more and more upon our notice.  Interstellar space seems\nproportionately no richer in movement or in matter than atomic space,\nand fancy, running beyond our physical powers of apprehension from\none to other, falls ever into the same nescience.  We can guess at a\ncommon rhythm behind the march of events and the linked procession of\nacts: so that our superstitions may be only distorted glimpses of\ndesign half-understood, scattered observations which our unequal\nspirits cannot join together.  Our superstitions take precise shape\nmore especially when we are in bodily pain and perturbed in spirit.\nOur imagination then sublimates the shadows of our fate, flickering\nover them like a marsh-light in the darkness of our half-knowledge;\nand achieves only to make their obscurity more obscure.\n\nThe young sequoia tree because of its sickness could do no more than\njust carry on its stunted life.  The breath entered faintly into its\nlabouring lungs: its whole life was limited by its deficient sap, and\nby the futile ineffective busyness of its stomata.  Yet it accepted\nthe ill-health as a normal state.  The idea of a more fortunate life\ncould not come to it, as it might to men.  It had never known any\nother condition than this painful breathing-in of the life-currents,\nthis poverty of exhalation, and so could not desire a better: whereas\nhuman beings in pain feel it all the more since their spirits can\ndisengage themselves from the trammels of the flesh and conjure up\nvisions of a happier fate.\n\nIn such a way we make worse our torments each time we long to be\ndelivered from them.\n\nA scented breath of evening floated beneath the starry sky.  Plants\nand creatures came to life at its whisper, which combined with the\nfar-away murmur of the river and the resonance of space to give a new\nvividness to the grove of young pines.  The tall and magnificent\ngiant with the full flush of its grown strength made this sweetness\nof nature its own.  Only the sick tree remained without benefit from\nthe life-giving evening airs.  Its sluggish viscid sap stagnated in\nthe clogged stomata.  Slowly its faint exhalations were breathed out\nthrough its pores: it seemed as though nothing could revive this\nimperfect organism: and as a matter of fact the first effect of\nillness is to disorganize the senses, to shatter the harmony of the\nunit attacked, so that it receives insufficiently and returns to the\nuniversal flow an insufficient rhythm.\n\nWe have all had experience for a shorter or a longer time of this\nheart-breaking state of sickness, when a livid mist seems to settle\nitself thickly over our faculties, and the objective world weighs\nupon us with the whole weight of our material blemishes.  At such a\ntime our sensitiveness to influences outside ourselves is bad,\nwhether it is that our disease-crippled organs are no longer powerful\nenough to communicate freely with the hidden forces through whose\npaths we move, or whether it is that these very forces in a manner\navoid an unhealthy assemblage.  Anyhow, it is only when suffering has\ndisordered our state that we become fully aware of the gulf which\nlies between the external world and that other world within us.\n\nBut what we learn more particularly at such moments is how our senses\nlimit external influences.  Our inner world is seething with a form\nof life which feels special to itself, since all contact with the\nvital currents of our environment has been cut off.  Also, apart from\na slight play given to the organs our physical sensibility detaches\nitself entirely from external adventures and elements.  When our\nbeing has once reached this absolute it fixes itself there, and no\npiling up of circumstance, in however extravagant a degree, could\nmove it an inch farther.  Thus a loss of consciousness through\nillness involves as vivid a sense of dizzy falling into space as a\nliteral plunge into some darkling abyss, and the perturbation of an\ninward malady may strike us as suddenly and sharply as the flash of a\nreal lightning-stroke jazzing across our eyes.\n\nIn all the world there is no force able to extend or prolong our\nsensibility beyond its fixed term; which may be a reflection upon the\npoverty of our means of apprehension.  We would not hear the crash of\ntwo colliding planets as loudly as the piercing of our ear-drums by a\npin-point, and to be burned alive in some conflagration is for the\nindividual as though the universe went up in flame, since for those\nfew seconds of his agony the intensity of the heat of his burning\nhouse is as great upon him as the fires of an incandescent world.  A\nheart struck by a fragment of bursting shell would feel no more if it\nwas caught up and crushed between clashing faces of rock.\n\nSo by means of our senses we can measure against our being the\ngreatest physical catastrophes: we can know the supreme degree of our\nfaculty for feeling pain without calling for a clash of worlds to\nprove it.  The limitations of our senses are such that beyond a\nquite-near point they can register no advance at all.  It is all the\nsame sensation whether we fall three hundred or thirty thousand feet.\n\nIts illness made the young sequoia dull to its circumstances, while\nthe forest giant all the while responded to each vibration of its\nenvironment.  On some days its sap seemed in easy relation with the\nair and scents and light raining upon it, as if a mysterious fluid\nsomewhere in these many elements was making eager its stomata and\ndissolving the material resistance of the fibres which cut off the\ntree's vital fluid from the outer air.  At other times, for no clear\nreason this sympathy between sap and outer world would grow difficult.\n\nWhen ill-health overtakes us, it closes off from exterior contact the\nprivate world in which we exist: but not completely: we are not\ndriven to subsist only on our internal vitality.  From there does\ncome the impulse or continuity which leads us up to action: but this\nenergy is reinforced by means existing independently of us, and yet\ninfluencing us to our inmost soul.\n\nOur passions come to birth within us, truly: but their growth and\nfinal efflorescence may be due to a variety of vibrations sent from\nwithout.  Our loves and braveries and hates are coloured by powers\nbeyond our will's control.  A single sentiment may express itself in\ndivers shapes according to the circumstances in which we move.  A\npassionate outburst may be one in a closed room, another in a street,\nquite different in open country.  The giant tree felt its feelings\nchange according to the state of the landscape over which it towered:\njust as men are peculiarly liable to be strong or weak, safe or\nfearful, forthcoming or callous according to their attitude, their\nstage-setting, the occult influences which hem them in.  Otherwise\nour likes and dislikes, our joys and sorrows would not move us to\ndifferent expressions of temper in different places and conditions.\n\nThe radiant discharges of the sky, the perfumes of space, and humane\nshades of earth abounded: but the sick tree, in the balmy evening,\nlaboured painfully to breathe them in.  A link of its armour of\ndefence had slipped, and about it all the fibres of its being had\nbecome displaced.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER 10\n\n_The Mirror of Changeless Time_\n\nThe giant tree seemed almost to slumber in the still hazy light of\nthat autumnal afternoon.  The sap appeared dispirited, weighed down\nfrom tree-top to root by weariness.  For some hundreds of years it\nhad not been working at full pitch.  The time-worn trunk bristled\nwith dried lifeless branches in whose veins sap had ceased to flow\nwith life-giving effect: and in the covering of needles outside the\npine could be seen definite signs of age, even to the extent of sorry\nbare patches.  Its life had now gone dull and very distant, indeed\nhad become little more than a reflection of the old boisterous self.\nApril and August no longer budded into splendid vigour in its\nutricles.  For plants as for creatures perceptions become faint with\ntime, sensations get blurred, lights grow dim, till of the life of\nyesterday nothing but a colourless print remains, a veiled\ninconsequent activity.  So dull stood the giant on this set November\nday, as if half-asleep.\n\nPerhaps it was recalling some wordless memory of its six thousand\nsprings?  Did its tissues tingle with stored-up impressions?  Perhaps\na confused sense of important events was moving in those physical\nparts which had most directly received their impact.  Up one side of\nthe time-worn trunk stretched an enormous scar, the relic of a gaping\nwound where once lightning had struck and gashed the tree so that sap\nran out to waste.  It took the giant more than a hundred years to\nclose that wound, a period which, for the tree, compared well with\nthe month in which our human flesh heals up: since time has no\nbeginning nor ending, is neither long nor short, has no\nhalting-places and never changes: its duration is relative to the\nlife of the things which are its vehicle, and expresses itself only\nin them.\n\nAccordingly the giant's decay, in terms, was like our own.  It might\nlast for centuries, during which the weakness and partial inertia of\nthe tree would persist: whereas the decay of man is completed in\nfifteen or twenty years.  Yet declines, like lives, in perspective\nwill be seen to have differed only in degree.  When man and tree have\nceased to exist their respective courses will be summed up in epochs,\nshort for the one and long for the other, but of the same category\nand as easily tabulated:--for past events all fall into order since\nthey exist only as memories, without the qualities of action which\ndistinguished them in fact.  In retrospect fifty years are like six\ncenturies, a year of the past scarcely longer than a charged dragging\nminute of the present.\n\nLet us imagine that the sequoia, on this misty autumn afternoon was\nrecalling its memories.  It could a little titillate its cells by\nremembering those uncounted days, sunny or overcast, those\nstorm-stricken or magical nights, those sharp or restful dawns.  Its\nsix thousand years of memory would be to the tree what his sixty\nyears are to an aged man, for in memory and dream we have two means\nwhich smooth away the unlike things in time, and give to it, for one\nlooking backward, an equality which active nature hardly possesses.\nA dream-second or a second in memory may be a century as easily as a\nyear: just as actions which have taken thousands of years to complete\nmay finally have the same contour as little events of an hour.  Our\neyes can enclose in their fixed impartial frame a huge landscape or a\ntiny plot of space.  What is passed has no existence except in\nmemory: while as for time--we carry it within ourselves, and pay it\nout slowly or fast (or unconsciously) according to whether we are\nbusy or interested or indifferent.  Hours are elastic periods, which\nexpand or contract according to the attention we pay them, and it is\nour ideas and our passions which mark them off round the face of our\ndays.\n\nTime may be imaged as a mirror, a confused mirror across whose\nimpassive face tens of thousands of scenes chase each other in a mazy\ndance: for in it are reflected the innumerable and never-closing\nconsequences of all action, with all the lights, all the shadows, all\nthe extent and motions of the universe.  The mirror itself is\nchangeless, and the semblance of movement lies in the reflection, in\nthat endless rout of fleeting images whose transience is to their\nglass as our little moment to eternity.  Our utmost capacity is to\nproject a thought-ray from our place and instant of existence back\ninto the night which hides our coming, or forward to the night which\nwaits our going--rays whose imagined courses towards the poles of the\ninfinite we cannot follow even in thought.  Yet they are our only\nlinks with past and future, those two names which together spell\neternity: the future a past not yet achieved, and the past a future\nleft behind.\n\nSuch would have been the thoughts of the sequoia (had it been able to\nthink like us) on this chill November day, as it stood there by the\ngrove of its sons and grandsons, the derived pine-trees which had\nsprung up about it, yet had not, even the greatest of them, reached\nto half its height: and something of the same train of thought might\nhave been started by the sight of the neighbouring forest, now in its\ntwentieth generation.  These other trees had passed from youth to\nmaturity, and then grown old and died, changing their promise into\nperformance, and at last becoming a mere memory; and each stage of\ntheir lives, each tree at every age was to be seen reflected in the\nimpassive glass of time, which kept of them no record nor trace, but\npreserved itself intact against them, as against all phases of the\nuniverse that had been, that was, that ever would be.\n\nYears, hours, minutes and moments are not children of Time, but\ncircumstance made visible in some one or something.  Only dreams seem\nable to assert themselves beyond the face of time's unchanging\nmirror.  They shine and register, wheel and flit in the darkling mist\nof eternity, with something of its power to embrace \u00c3\u00a6ons and seconds\nalike.  Like eternity too they harmonize and arrange the great things\nof the universe with the least, with things so small that they leave\nno mark even in the cloud-confines of the immaterial: and again like\neternity they have no beginning and no end, and so convey something\nof the incommunicable character of chaos.\n\nThus in that lifeless November the giant seemed lost in a white\ntrance.  If we are vivid in springtime, in autumn we wish for sleep\nand dreams.  A vagueness is the nature of the falling year.  Up\nabove, in space, great deep clouds expanded gradually.  They dragged\nthemselves along in languor, while their slow shadows darkened the\nmoist earth and climbed the stripped branches of the giant pine.  In\nthis misty autumnal afternoon against its sad background all movement\nseemed slack.  A formless but dreamy instinct seemed implicit in\nanimals and plants and things.  The minutes ticked off lazily in the\nunearthly gleaming half-light, in this soft and yet magical\natmosphere above which the giant seemed to hang its head in reverie.\nIts relaxed needles, weeping boughs and lined rugged trunk made up a\nmournful-seeming disappointed whole.  There was not a breath nor a\nwhisper in the air.  Every shape, every colour, every scent, each\nwithering blade of grass supine on the earth, each pebble on the\nplain, each ripple of light or trembling shadow seemed to give off a\nsimilar emanation, a dull slow tonelessness which permeated the\ntoneless air, above, below, about.  In one huge fissure of the bole\nslept a bear, made torpid by the close thick weather.  On the ground\nnear the foot of the tree in a tuft of dried grass a dog was\nsleeping, the dim gaze of its half-open eyes veiled and turned\ninward.  Beside it on a raised turf sat a great insect, the hardly\nvisible vibration of whose wings seemed pensive too.  Farther away,\nbut within sight from the tree-top, stood a hut whose people lay\nsilently watching the great clouds pass.  They also were dreaming or\nthinking, allowing the whims of the spirit born of this declining\nseason to play over what had been or what yet might be.\n\nIt would seem as though rare influences of all that is\nincomprehensible and infinite in space, of the chaotic and\ninconceivable in time, were sometimes allowed to echo down upon\nthings alive and things lifeless, and to swing them in a general and\nharmonious way.  Nature moves on for ever, sleeplessly and\nuntiringly, but from time to time the past seems to bode forward in\nbrief uncertain fashion, casting lights and shadows across the loom\nof the present.  The adamant Now may keep no trace of the dead Then,\nbut the ripples of the past none the less persist in ever-failing\nwidening rings, which pass out into the abyss as ghost-memories: and\nthese, falling sometimes upon the bark of a tree, or upon the nature\nof a man, or the mind of a dog, or into a sea or a perfume or the\nhalf-light of a dewy evening, evoke dreams and clothe the formless\nwith apparent form that it may have relation with material men and\nthings.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER 11\n\n_The Wheel of Life Lived_\n\nTime then is not to be divided into centuries and hours and minutes:\nbut just as each atom figures a world in itself, so each moment is an\neternity, one link in an endless chain which binds the remotest past\nto the remotest future.  Time's mirror may look with changeless face\nupon the tens of thousands of events which defile before it and pass\naway leaving no mark;--but that is not to say that these events are\nwithout issue, since their consequences ripple out into space for\never and ever.  What has happened never wholly ceases to happen.  To\nmankind a sentiment of it may return in many forms--in a snatch of\nmusic, in a perfume, in some subtle vibration or illumination of the\natmosphere--and these returns are authentic parcels of the original\nmoment, for time is to be divorced neither from material nor\nimmaterial things.  This Present, which to us will so soon be Past,\nkeeps, as it flies, something of its true essence, and will revive\nits influence a year, a century, thousands of centuries later, in\nsome scent or sound, or unforeseen collocation of circumstance.\n\nThis continuing process gives us our only approach to the conception\nof eternity, for there could be no endless time if the hours lived\nonly once and for all, and then died irremediably.  Seconds which\nhave their passage grow enriched in its course and cease, only to\nrevive in a new form, after the same fashion as ourselves who, when\ndeath has resolved us, will live again in other combinations of our\nelements, no particle of which can be lost in space or time.  Each\nsecond comprehends eternity, as each atom the infinite, and the\ncourse of all that is in the universe is rotary, an orbit constant as\nthose of stars or of electrons.  Everything wheels about space in\ncircles; and probably movement in time is also circular: so that when\nwe find ourselves strangely imagining things which have been, or\nthings which may sometime be, we can explain ourselves to ourselves\nwith the reflection that our momentary path has doubtless that second\ncrossed the emanations of some instant fully lived by another, long\nago.\n\nThe sensation that we have already seen or lived or heard something\nis similarly explained.  Each active moment is an amalgam of\nsentiments and wills and multiple elements which split apart as soon\nas the purpose is achieved.  The moments of its duration then scatter\nthrough space and time, taking with them remains of their charged\nsounds, colours, and scents, with atmospheres of joy or sadness not\nfully perceptible by our limited senses, but certainly to be opined,\nand almost to be felt.  We may pursue this train of thought a little\nfarther, and be prepared to accept that certain places derive a\nspecial atmosphere from the events of which they have been the\nsetting, and may preserve it indefinitely.  We are often sensible of\nparticular associations which hang about such and such a feature: one\nplace may instil terror, and others peace, disquietude, mystery, or\nlove, without any apparent quality in their disposition to account\nfor the possession of such power.  The reason is that the events or\nthoughts or actions of which they have been the scene have left\ntraces within the four walls of the room, in the branches of the\ntree, or in the various features of the place.  In fact, the seconds\nof old time are yet living there, loaded with old association, and as\nthey whirl and vibrate they sensitize us with their invisible rays.\nIf we were endowed with new faculties, sensitive to such influences\nas now escape us, and with them were able to apprehend and analyse\nthese scattered fragments of the past, these waifs of dead\nadventures, then we might be able to reconstruct the deeds and lives\nand deaths, all the unplumbed combinations of circumstance in the\ncities or countries of our passage.  This invisible swarm of \"seconds\nwhich have been\" hems us about, wherever and whenever we go, with its\ntraces of suffering and of delight, of unrest, of clashing, of\ncolour: for the emanations of our souls (like those of the souls of\nthings) are heavy with various essences which may grow faint, but\nnever altogether perish.\n\nIn this dead November air a soft musical murmur seemed to hang round\nthe giant tree, as if it were mourning its old age and sadness.  In\nthis autumnal dreaminess the tree was living again some of its passed\nlife, hearing the times and moments thronging by, contrasting (even\nin its least fibre) the brilliancy of yesterday with the sadness of\nthe failing present.  The numberless radiations of the air which for\ncenturies had made florid its stem seemed to-day to renew about it\ntheir health-giving vibrations.  This dust of time, the elements of\nold situations great and small, had come from near or far as the case\nwas: perhaps from the beginning of things in the depths of the abyss.\nTo-morrow, when the great tree would be no more, it might affect\nother forms, and make fertile other existences.\n\nWe go abroad in a throng of atoms, the basic materials of distant and\ndiverse forms of life.  Sometimes they breathe upon us, sometimes we\nhear them, sometimes we see them.  At other times they move us to\nlove or hope or fear, melt us to tenderness, brace us to deep\nefforts, or daze us with weird portents.  To this vagabond star-dust\nwe can ascribe a sometime fit of passion or wrath, of madness or joy.\nThe world about us is all peopled with these spirit-mists.  We live\nred moments and white moments, odorous or musical moments, moments of\npain or love, brief or slow, loud or peaceful.  Space, to repeat,\nbuilds up nature out of its own substance: and likewise unchanging\ntime makes use of its own essence to assemble and arrange and fix the\norder of events.\n\nEvening came down wan and weeping over the uncertain scene.  The mist\nthickened into clouds like smoke, whilst silence and a baseless\nlethargy soaked through the sluggish air.  The giant tree loomed\nstraight and huge in the twilight, its form as ever, its colours\nthose which it had assumed on so many evenings.  Neither shape nor\nappearance was different from those with which it had fronted the\nautumns of many years, and their intricate pallors; but never before\nhad it looked so desolate in the desolate splendour of its setting.\nIts sadness was as patent as the sadness of the landscape: and since\nneither the content nor the surface of this November gloaming\nappeared different from those of past autumns the source of this\nchanged feeling had to be searched for.  There was no motion in the\ntree, nor stirring of a blade of grass, nor strange gleam through the\nfog; nor did the chill air feel endued with a particular quality: yet\nthis depression over the world was true and heavy, weighing down all\nspirits and things from some unknown direction, and by imperceptible\nmeans.  It could only have been the product of secret universal\ninfluences vibrating in space as a cloud of invisible particles able\nto link time to matter, as dreams to reality.\n\nThe giant was weary, the giant was sick: and the mysterious sorrow of\nits pain was diffused about it like an odour.  The low clouds\ncontinued to collect together, darkening with their purple masses the\nviolet striations of the unwholesome sky.  The still country-side was\nsuddenly stirred by a faint shudder.  It was that the sun had set.\nThe first approach of evening yet held relics of the light of day:\nand through it came another sudden tremor, which awoke the slumbering\nair, and the inert earth, the pale grass, the scattered pebbles in\nthe plain, the roosting birds, the beasts in their dens men in their\nhouses, and insects in their inmost hiding-places.  The pine-tree in\nturn felt this invisible convulsion penetrate strangely from its\ncrest to its roots.\n\nThe convulsion was invisible, indefinable, and immense, and yet its\ncause seemed wholly hidden.  What was this swarm of vivified instants\n(lived perhaps millions of years ago) which had drifted into the\ndistrict of the giant pine?  How far had they come, these fulfilled\nseconds, whose course had once been run?  Were they the time- and\nspace-enfeebled echo of a cataclysm in some unknown world? (when? and\nwhere?) or the travail of a blind sun lost in space, yet casting its\nominous enigmatic messages across the worlds?\n\nThese very real astral influences, active upon men and also upon all\nthat exists, are understood by us usually in an unworthy and\ninsufficient degree.  It is admitted that we are at times bound by\nthe forces of distant heavenly bodies, but this can hardly be as\nindividuals, nor can their waves, when they sway us, be sent forth\nexpressly on our petty account.  We must not be so simple as to think\nthat the existence of any one among us can interest or engross the\nwhole activity of a sphere or that its labouring is to make smooth\nthe way of a single man.  We feel its influence when our path crosses\nthe direction of its discharged waves; but all beings, all plants,\nhills, peoples, countries in the same case are influenced at the same\ntime as ourselves, and in a like fashion.\n\nThis may explain why associations of things are sometimes swayed to a\ncommon feeling or purpose by invisible means.  We often note that a\nsense of gaiety or of suffering, of liveliness or of resignation, of\ncalm or disquietude imposes itself on us and on our neighbours, quite\nindependently of our own state of mind.  Both animate and inanimate\nthings are subject to such changes of state, which may last a long or\na short time, may be restricted or general, but which generally lead\ntheir objects in an undesigned direction.  Such forms have probably\nplayed a wide and yet undetected part in the history of mankind, and\nalso in the physical history of the globe: they may account for some\nof our unexpected and abrupt departures from the usual manner, for\nthe irregular impulses which make us commit acts foreign to our\nnormal will and nature.  So that the unknown, into which pass our\ndead acts and ideas, may itself conceal also the sources of our\nresolutions and of our performances.\n\nThe evening closed in yet more, its clouds slowly veiling the\nheavens, while the mists thickened, and covered up the ground: yet\nthe unnameable trouble, which so mysteriously gripped the region, had\nfaded as mysteriously as it had come.  Unchanged, in its surrounding\nsilence and circumstances stood the giant, serene once more.  True it\nwas still tired, and the sap in its veins felt enfeebled by advancing\nage; but the sense of misery and desolation just now weighing upon it\nhad been lifted.  The dismal pomp of invisible minutes of grief had\nwended its way past, invisibly.  These sad, dark, disaster-laden\nminutes--from what black event, and whence had they been derived?\nWhat incalculable journey had they made?  and whither would their\nuncontrolled and endless course next tend?  And the great tree\nitself, standing there so stiff under that autumn sky, so remote from\nours--what can have been these detached moments of its life and being\nwhich come from its stem to interest us, to bring to our lamp-lighted\nroom the ghosts of its joy and the shades of its pain?  What were\nthese acts, these enjoyed moments of the giant's life, that they can\nso float about us, murmur to us, hold our interest, that even to our\ndreams come memories and broken incidents of what it was? that as the\ntale of its death draws near to be told, we feel grief for that huge\nruddy trunk?\n\nPerhaps it is because the thoughts which take wing from our souls, as\nfrom the souls of things, are so many parcels of vital essence, which\npass over the face of the mirror of changeless time, and look into it\nand are pictured there, and then break up and rearrange themselves,\nbut never die.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER 12\n\n_When the Wood-Dust floated in the Air_\n\nWhilst the August sun was pouring its clear warm rays from the blue\nheavens upon the world, a fine wood-powder continued to rain down\nfrom all the internal cavities of the giant's trunk, in a reddish\ndust which lay deep upon the roots.  The tree's substance had been so\nfalling away for centuries, with every now and then a larger\ndilapidation when some great cavity formed itself within its\nthickness: while on the outside the harsh bark as slowly decayed.\n\nBeneath the soil in the still-kindly darkness of the earth's heart\nthe roots, regretting their failed vivacity, were now resigned to\ngrow more dry and twisted and inert day by day, powerless any more to\nsuck life-giving nourishment from their ground.  On the surface of\nthe earth the eternal counter-change of life and death proceeded.\nThousands of births, both plant and animal, occurred, to compensate\nfor the thousands of deaths, the wheel of life impartially grinding\nout change or creation or destructiveness.\n\nIt was now summer.  The still air was elastic and alive, and\ntransmitted a shining lightness to the world.  All was green and gay\nand content, serene as the unflecked sky and the splendid sun.  Girt\nabout with this joyous and pellucid atmosphere stood the giant, tall\nas ever, but contrasting more sharply against its pure keenness.  The\nhuge embrace, vivid and blue and green, in which heaven held earth,\nseemed almost violent in opposition to the spirit of the tree, whose\ndead branches and scarred trunk and weary roots marked a heavy\ndespondency.\n\nSorrow in spring and summer is quite unlike sorrow in autumn or\nwinter.  When the year dies the current of life is dying too, whereas\nin spring-time the new sharp vigour of life makes any sadness seem\ndoubly desolate.  The warm sun and renewal of activity in animals and\nplants, the liveliness of those about us intensify our grief, which,\nwhen autumn comes, is in keeping with the common tendency of nature,\nand becomes moderate, soothed by the absence of joy in others.\nApposition is the greatest tonic of colours, as analogy clears the\nvision: accordingly this day of fairest summer, with its luxuriant\nflowers and plants about which the bees were humming in the sunshine\nso that nature seemed to sing softly to itself in the jocund air and\nthe universal gladness made the far hills come together for joy, this\nday made prominent the infinite desolation of the giant's aspect.\n\nThe gold of the sunlight was gilding the singing ripples of the\nwater, the birds were flinging their loudest notes upon the velvet\nair, the wild beasts were supine with excess of well-being, the\nplants were burgeoning and swelling with sap in the afflatus of their\nperfumes: but the sequoia, alone, was bitten through and compassed\nwith the bitter smell of old age, and felt life draw back from its\ninsensitive branches, from its ruined trunk, from its hidden roots,\nnow lifeless and impassive among the former fertilizing benefits of\nthe juices underground.  The trees near-by were preening themselves\nin the rain of sun-starts, shuddering with the force of the new waves\nof life pumped into them from the teeming earth.  The wind thrilled\nthrough their branches and all nature came together in that healthy\nrush of new life, which had once been common also to the giant tree.\nOnce! for now the inside of its trunk was powdered thick with that\nrain of fine red wood-dust, falling ever more fast towards the tree's\nruin.\n\nYet the outline of the tree against the clear, thin sky appeared\nunchanged.  At its very head, the topmost twig still bore green and\nlustrous pine-needles.  The remaining life of the sequoia had taken\nrefuge and concentrated itself there, in those few square inches of\nsupple wood and fluid sap.  From the first days of spring the tree\nhad seemed to live wholly for this last branch, which was linked\ndirectly with a very fine tap root burrowing deep underground.  The\nonly pulse of life in the tree was here, in the circulation of these\nfew drops of sap between head and foot.  Breath had slowly abandoned\nthe rest of the tree, to hover hazardous and trembling for a weak\nwhile between the labouring root and the little green twig lost away\nup there in the blue.\n\nThe tree's entire intention seemed now to lie in this last twig, to\nthe exclusion of any thought of the huge dead mass between.  One\nmight say almost that it tried to ignore all the decay, after the\nfashion of other failing lives.  This solitary green branch on the\ninert bole was like the quivering wing-case of a crushed insect, or\nthe childish and petty busyness of an old man near the grave.\nEverybody can recall the incomprehensible eagerness of some dying\nsoul to recollect a strayed trifle, as if repose of mind depended on\nits being put straight: or that other unfortunate on his sick bed who\nseemed to lose sense of the beating wings of death in listening to\nthe petty ticking of a newly mended watch.  Childhood, prime and age\nhave ambitions and goals to suit their strengths, so that the complex\nand magnificent dreams of youth grow pale and few as life dims in us.\nOld men have small hopes and mean activity, not because they are\nweary and sick of life, but because life is abandoning them: and at\nthe final moment, when life leaves us altogether, its last feeblest\ntrace may be a trivial thought which we try to fix, a futile wish we\nlong to satisfy, a foolish interest.  This last living branch of the\ngiant tree may prefigure the moment when the last inhabitants of our\nglobe will cling to its last habitable portion while all the rest of\nit is frozen in an eternal winter, or when the like fate overtakes\nthe last habitable planet of our sky.  Life which is made by inches\ndeparts by inches: in those sudden cases of apparent and violent\ndestruction it is only that the falling curve dips downward more fast.\n\nThis we must consider not as a special act of nature, but as an\nultimate effect of life moving towards that new arrangement which is\ncalled death.  Since everything which exists, small or great, is\ncompounded of various elements (an interaction of multiple energies),\nso it is logical that life should take hold of its matter piece-meal,\nand relinquish it, when the time comes, also piecemeal.\n\nIn this fashion the internal decomposition of the pine-tree\nproceeded.  Slowly its substance crumbled away to dust, amidst the\nclose smell of age and decay.  Tremors of dissolution began to pass\nthrough the giant.  Dull creakings ran up and down the trunk.  Its\nsorry boughs quivered with a thin resonance, while deep-buried in the\nsoil its roots contracted in agony.  A narrow crack opened in the\nwood just above ground level, and gradually spread round the trunk,\ngrowing deeper as it went: while the red tree-dust trickled out\nthrough every hollowed place and floated in the air as a fine cloud,\nproof of dry rot and presage of coming death.\n\nStill, at the very crest there shone out golden in the sunlight that\nlast living branch, fresh and shining in all its needles.  The\ngracious summer had fortified all life upon earth.  From a hill far\naway there came a waft of air, which loaded itself on its passage\nwith the emanations of plain and field and wood, till it reached the\ndistrict of the tree.  Its warm soft breath kissed the giant gently,\njust waving the little green twig up aloft, and then passed on, as\nthough towards an endless series of new scenes and adventures.  Yet\nit was early checked.  A line of trees, making a wall with their\ninterwoven branches, repulsed it, flung it back with a new impulse.\nIt became a gust, sweeping along the ground-level, raising a cloud of\nleaves and dust and the dried powder of decomposed wood about the\nbase of the sequoia, into whose fissured trunk it blew strongly.  The\ntree shuddered, spiral tremors running up its length and down again,\nrather as the invigorating sap had once run up and down.  At the foot\nof the tree, where the circular crack was, these tremors were stayed.\nThey ran together, reinforced each other, swelled into lateral\nshocks.  A deep low warning sounded in the body of the wood, and\nechoed outside.  For a little the huge shape shivered in the liquid\nair, oscillating to right and left, while the tiny plume of green at\nits summit described vivid curves against the blueness of the sky.\nThen simply, powerfully, inevitably, as in all natural decisions,\ncame a loud rending like the last cry of an agonizing spirit, and the\nimmense pillar bowed down and fell upon the earth, which shook under\nthe weight, while the sky, suddenly made vacant of such bulk, seemed\nto leap up as the giant fell.  Thick clouds of ruddy dust rose widely\ninto the air, filling it with the damp odour of decay, while the\nbottom of the trunk feathered out in splinters, as the dried roots,\nso long hidden from the day, were torn out from both ground and wood.\n\nMore than seven thousand years ago a heedless puff of wind had cast a\nsequoia seed upon the fertile earth: and now another puff had broken\ndown its tree.  For more than seventy centuries the forest giant had\nhad its part in this life which we share, and its course (like ours,\nwhile they endure) had run curving through time and space till its\ncircle was completed, a perfect round, as all life's movements are,\nand will be everywhere and evermore.  Its very age was inscribed in\nconcentric circles in the thickness of its trunk.  The seasons, in\ntheir repeated going and coming, had given the impression of a slowly\nturning wheel, like the terrene revolution or the sun's.  The\nsequoia, a cylinder in core, a cone in shape, had lived amongst\nfellow-curves.  The rounded stars journey in their elliptical orbits,\nand the electrons likewise in their infinite degree.  This unchanging\nchangeless time rounds all things in their span.  The hours encompass\nus, described upon their dial; and even contrasts at the last run\ntogether, made to coincide by the slow bending of every line of form.\nInfinity, if that be the nature of the universe, causes to meet all\nmovement when its arc of direction is completed, and the course of\ntime too seems circular, the rolling of a wheel.  Can chaos, the\nabyss itself, be concentric, after the likeness of everything with\nwhich its halls are peopled?\n\nSuppose that an eagle, piercing high beyond our sight in the blue\nvault of heaven, had seen the giant fall.  It would have thought the\nevent and the object petty, across the vast distance.  One near-by\nwould have been moved by the greatness of the victim.  The greatness\nand the littleness of things thus seem to depend upon the point of\nview--a trite, daily, observation, no doubt, but so is life itself to\nus.  Big and little--is it not possible that proportions get their\nvalue only subjectively, and that in space they rank less important\nthan to our minds?  This concept of relativity, producing itself in\neverlasting stages across the horizon of our intelligence--may it not\nbe linked with that other law of comparison, the relation of one\ndimension to another, which ensures something bigger than any object,\nhowever big, and something smaller than the almost infinitely small?\n\nAnyhow, measured by human standards, the trunk of the dying giant as\nit lay there on the ground was huge.  The wind was still rustling in\nits branches, though the air about them was made dense with wood-dust\nnow.  It used to be, to our mind, an immense tree ... and soon it\nwill be nothing.  Soon?  Before the sequoia has given back to space\nthe elements of which it was made, its carcass will have to rot for\nhundreds or thousands of years.  It takes so long for all the\nconstituents of such a tree to be resolved, for the oxygen to go back\nto oxygen, for the carbon to re-become carbon, the liquid to turn\nagain into liquid.  Yet this lapse of time, when the last trace of\nthe tree has ceased to be, will have been as a second.  To our\nfallibility it has seemed long, but eternity, which will bring the\nultimate and certain destruction of all matter, recks not of a few\nthousand centuries.\n\nWhen it was alive the forest giant harboured in its branches\nthousands of bodies of insects.  Some were crushed violently to dust\nby accidents.  Some perished merely by lapse of time, but all in the\nend came to nothing: for eternity reduces everything to the same\nvalue, sooner or later--reduces them all to nothing.  Our thousands\nof lives, magnificent or sordid, long or short, great or small, as\nthey happen to be on earth, leave no mark in space and time.  The\nglory or the shame of what has been bears value and meaning only in\nour fitful solitary dreams.  Should we consider them as having never\nexisted--all these things which have had life and have, under the\nlaw, returned to the chaos which called them forth--now only as the\ndust of forces and of time?  The elements remain eternally unchanged,\nhowever protean their assumed shapes: perhaps what we term life and\ndeath are only their incidental phases.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER 13\n\n_What is called Death_\n\nThe forest giant now lay low in the sunlight waiting the return of\nits substances to their kindred elements of time or space.  For the\nmoment the tree was dead, since it kept yet its living shape; but\nwhen nothing of it remained recognizable, it would be as if it had\nnever been.  Long and short lives, rich and poor lives, are all made\nequal at the moment when they have ended.\n\nLike the mass of beings and plants and things, our tree found rest in\ndeath.  After so many and with so many we ask anxiously, \"What is\nthis Death?\" a sempiternal, unanswered, fresh and vital question.  No\none has yet solved it, and probably no one will, for we cannot\nexperience death and retain our power to register its effects.\nSometimes we can feel it coming near, or imagine we do, and at that\ntime may try to describe its onset; but such an experience has\nnothing in common with veritable death.  To know it, and to impart\nour knowledge of it to others, would entail our having control of our\nfaculties, whereas death's first act is to deprive us of just that\ncontrol.\n\nHow much has been said and thought and written about death!  And\nwithout effect.  We should make up our minds that nothing is to be\nadded to what we already know about it.  We continually strain to\nrealize the flavour of death by heaping up a confused mass of ideas,\nby strange and inordinate imaginings, by deliberately forcing our\nthought and dealing to a point beyond control.  Yet these are not\nmeans and ways by which to learn; for in our wildest dreams, in our\nmost fearful phantasies, or strangest visions, in all that is\nunfamiliar, runs the thread of life.  We can have no dreams or\nhallucinations or inventions, born of true imagination or of a fit of\nmadness, unless life give them us--and so how can they hold an idea\nor sense of death?  And this is why we will never, in anticipation,\ntaste death.\n\nWe cannot even distinguish and analyse for ourselves the fashion in\nwhich death will some day bear us away from life.  Death is the\nnon-existent, made not out of silence (which noise explains), nor out\nof darkness (which light would explain), but out of something\ninconceivably absolute.  Sleep implies an awakening, dreams imply the\npowers of seeing, thinking, hearing, inertness implies the power of\nmovement; so that nothing in our range of experience, from complete\npeace to utter terror, can plant in us a true sense of death, and\nprobably no man, to the end of the world, will ever be able to\nexplain it in terms of others' deaths or of his own.\n\nWhen our spirit has departed (that is, when the bond between the\nsecret and innumerable forces whose continued contact makes our life\nis at last unloosed), we are only vague shapes in deliquescence.  The\ndead keep nothing of their ancient character.  What had been their\nlife is submerged in the infinite whole, as myriads of particles of\nvarying elements.  In nature alone is the power to dispose of these\ndispersed and impalpable essences; so it is finally impossible that\nan entity such as our present should ever again come together and act\nafter our death.  We are, and we will cease to be: that much is\ncertain; but what we will be can never be told.\n\nIn some purple and grey evening of the closing year, one of those\npale hours which seem to dissolve away our flesh that our spirit may\ngrow more reinforced in itself, we can sit and dream of those who\nwere dear to us, whom life has left so that they are no more found.\nWith far-away eyes and hearts heavy with memories we remember our\ndead, how brilliant their faces, how dear their voices, how moving\ntheir presences once were to us: and from memories so harrowing we\nhave not wracking despair and agony, but only pitying tears, which\nseem inadequate as issue of the certainty that we will never see\nagain those looks nor hear those voices nor feel those presences.\nThese dead were all in all to us, and yet they have gone without\ntrace left either for us or for the world.  And why does our reason\nnot swoon in a nerve-shattering flood of horror when it sees the\ndeaths of people whom we loved, or whom we have merely seen doing and\nmoving, people who have pleased us or hurt us, whose warm hands (full\nand trembling with life) have touched ours, whose glances have met\nour own; why are we not terrified as we stand by at their supreme\nmoment when life and death meet, and a world in the winking of an eye\nis reduced to nothing?  And when we have lost our familiar friends,\nhow can we go on living, and talking? how can we take pleasure in\nthings or be sorry, in our usual fashion?  And how think of them\nafter they have gone, with such calm regret and resignation, whereas\nit was a frenzied grief, touching madness, which the anticipation of\ntheir future deaths evoked in us?\n\nThe answer to these questions is that the knowledge how we must\nourselves some day die is always stirring in us, forms part of our\nflesh and blood, moves in our nerves, and finds our own inevitable\ndestined end prefigured in each death of those about us.  We say, or\nrather we feel obscurely, that what is happening to them will some\nday happen to us, when the fatal time comes for us to pay this dread\ntribute which they are paying.\n\nPerhaps it is the same current of ideas, which makes collective\ndisaster, such as war or pestilence, less frightful to us than the\ntragedies of individuals.  The consciousness that we are ourselves\nexposed to such perils reduces our commiseration, not out of egotism\n(as is commonly thought), but from a sense that we too will bear our\npart in the eventual expiation.  The idea that in our turn we will\nsuffer this softens in some odd way our dread of the inevitable and\nthe distress we might feel at another's pitiable situation.\n\nThe younger sequoia trees which had survived the greatest of their\nfamily would flourish for a long while yet, and enjoy the vigour of\ntheir cool fragrant sap; but the fall of the giant would be theirs in\nthe end.  They would go brittle and inert before the fatal hour.\nNeither the light of day, nor warmth, nor the kindly earth would any\nmore be profitable to them.  Their substance would dissolve\ninfallibly into a fine red dust, smelling mournfully of age.  Only\ntime and space, of all the universe, remain for ever changeless.\n\nThere was a bustle of ants in the heavy dust of the decaying wood, up\nand down the fallen trunk of the giant tree, now flecked with\nalternate bars of light and shade.  Here as elsewhere life and death\nsucceeded one another.  Flowers bloom as flowers fade, creatures are\nborn as others die, fresh springs rise up here as rivers grow dry\nelsewhere, crystals are formed as others split: and all the while\nearth goes forward towards its frozen fate.  In high heaven the\nwheeling stars prepare themselves to receive life, or to grow\ndesolate; all is in flux, transforms itself, repeats itself, dies:\neven what seems to us most assured and everlasting.  While we\nourselves, atoms of the universe, endure our sentence of imprisonment\nin life according to inexorable law, until the term of death.\n\nIn such a chaos, where, amidst millions of clashing forces, millions\nof destinies are being worked out, what can be the purpose of the\nall-seeing Eye? what inconceivable end has He designed for the living\nand for the dead, for the stars, for all creation?  Our souls and\nbodies, our births and goings-out, the details and the wholes, what\nis the final inexpressible combination which will resolve them all?\nwhither does the huge inexplicable movement tend?\n\nIn face of such a problem let us remember how we mitigate our terror\nby being able to take ourselves and our puny acts seriously.  They\nare so small compared with the constellations of the stars, and yet\nthey absorb us.  We are able to laugh and cry, to love and hate, in\nour narrow bounds, forgetting for the while the agony of the unknown\nwhich encompasses us, and forgetting to ask the how and why, the\npurpose of each act of life, its relation to the universe.  We are\nable to exist by and according to the impulses of our own flesh and\nspirit, as each species exists according to the particular measure\nand direction of its means.\n\nThe forest giant also had its time.  A pine-seed after manifold\nadventures transformed itself, in a course of admirable permutations,\ninto a mighty tree for more than seventy centuries.  Yet its hour\nstruck: and in its fate can be read the fates of all created things,\nafter due allowance has been made for variety in age and kind and\nsize.  The giant at last lay in peace upon the fertile ground, having\nhad its life, like us, and like us having nothing thereafter in\neternity or in the infinite: though while it lived it obeyed the\nnature of its kind, and all powers in earth and heaven seemed leagued\nin its support.\n\nSo we do all, while we exist.  In the small circle which it is\nhappiness for us to fill, we repeat the experience of those who have\ngone before; and in the breathing air, in the shining light, the\ndancing heat, the darkening shadow, in the rhythm of the friendly\nworld we carry through to the end the courses laid down for us.  And\nvainly do we seek to learn not merely whence we come and whither we\ngo, but what and why we are, while we exist.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER 14\n\n_The Theory of Eternal Sleeplessness_\n\nWhat can chaos be but the mass of elements not yet conjoined with\nthose other atoms which have been embodied and which have returned to\nthe mass?\n\nThe fallen tree was now sunken in an endless sleep.  The rays of the\nsun playing over its ruined trunk gradually absorbed its colours.\nThe discoloured redness of its substance, the yellow of its rotted\ndust, the fresh green of its last shoots slowly faded, while the\nwinds took away its antique smell and the blue atmosphere\nre-incorporated the oxygen, the carbon, and the last elements of\nmoisture in its wood.  Finally the whole shape of the former tree\ndisappeared, so that there remained on earth no visible or tangible\ntrace of its former inhabitant; though its substance still existed.\nIts component parts could be found in the light and air, in the\nclouds, in a vibration, a breath, on a stone, either in material\nsubstances or in invisible radiations.  They were the old elements of\nthe sequoia, exactly as they had been in essence, though now their\nforms were so different that they conjured up no memories of the\nvanished tree.  On the analogy it may well be that the solid\nparticles, the liquids, the essences which together make up our\napparent forms, have had equally varied incarnations, have been\nbeautiful or vile, have been drab or splendid, have been\ndelicious-smelling, have encountered a thousand unexpected changes\nand adventures before they were re-born as us.  The energy which\nmoves us, the matter which gives us substance, the impulses which\nexcite us, the dreams which trouble us, and the occasional mysteries\nwhich vibrate in our souls and bodies may come from sources thousands\nof years old, and through a myriad phases of existence.\n\nIn face of these unexplored ramifications of our personality it seems\nimpossible that we should ever be able to tie effect to cause, or\nlearn the reason of these secret longings of ours, or of those\nstrange instincts and reactions, those preferences, those fears.\nThey come to us from so far, the forces which order our doings: and\nthough each element remains intact and unadulterated, yet signs of\nthe many moments they have passed embodied in various shapes cling to\nthem always, like fine dust.\n\nOne wonders whence came the particles which composed the giant tree,\nfrom what previous embodiments, and into what shapes they reassembled\nafter the pine was dead.  What had been green in the tree might be\nblack or transparent when next its elements took visible form.  What\nhad made the tree seem solid might be liquid or vapour in the new\nassemblage.  The fragrant pine-fumes might be solid and common next\ntime.  Common?  Well, hardly perhaps, for there is neither beautiful\nnor ugly, noble nor ignoble in the universe.  Such qualities are\nconferred upon things by their impact upon our senses.  This or that\nvortex of atoms which to-day gives us exquisite dreams may in a later\nevolution be some combination utterly hateful to our taste.  A\nprocess which wounds us to-day may to-morrow bring forth a marvellous\nconstellation of molecules.  The indestructible elements whirl\nunceasing in the universe, moving from an out-worn structure to a new\none, dissolving and amalgamating without rest till they rejoin the\never-lasting silence--whence they will leap out again to like\nadventures, or towards yet unknown variations, in turn to scatter in\na dust of atoms.  An embodiment may last for a day or for hundreds of\nthousands of years; but its inevitable end is in the chaos of\ninfinity.\n\nOn the sun-bathed earth an irrefragable peace had at last drowned the\nruins of the tree.  With its death one particular adventure in\ncreation was run.  The forces which had made it tangible would\ncontinue to function, but their specific combination as a pine-tree\nwas ended for ever.  The forest giant henceforward would be as before\nits birth--a part of the body of eternal nature.  Around it the\nrhythm of the world would flow, neither faster nor slower than of\nold, with light and shadow, ice and fire, birth and death, all things\njust as before, but not _it_: these similar conditions cannot be of\n_this_ tree's atoms, nor partakers of _its_ life, nor a union of\n_its_ elements.  Its race was run: as in this world all things must\nsome while end.  The tree with the ruddy trunk and green needles was\ndead: and they are dead, or will die, those insects with the gaudy\nwing-cases, the bright-scaled fish, the downy birds, the sharp-fanged\nanimals, proud mankind, diamonds of the purest water, black carbon,\nseas, mountains, world and suns.  The eternal universal is built up\nof perishable parts, and our blind career is only a succession of\nincidents like or unlike, a drawn-out flicker of beginnings and\nendings, a steady stream of sensations, of bubbles swelling up and\nbursting, one single life made up of a myriad lives.  They beat and\nflow and scatter, to be re-born after each change.\n\nWe are all ephemeral in terms of our allotted situation, and eternal\nin terms of the universe.  Everything which is still, as everything\nwhich moves about us, is no more than a whirl of situations\nconstantly made and unmade: and so our substances, those which now\nmake up ourselves, will infallibly scatter us some day.  Elements\nseem to grow tired at last of being confined in one special shape, to\nbe weary of being so long a man, a stone, a river, a fire.  Their\nweariness is ours, in sum.  We feel vigorous or weak, joyful or sad,\nperturbed or resigned according to the prosperity of our cells: and\nwe all, whatever our age and health, encounter hours in which,\nwithout reason given, our whole being longs for annihilation.  At\nother times--in common experience it happens often at that hour when\nlamps should be lit--there swells up in us an indeterminate wish to\nbe other than we are: and our flesh goes dead, our hearts cold, our\nheads empty of desire.\n\nMay this not be our dissatisfied elements, desirous of change,\nspeaking within us?  And the often-just premonitions of death which\ncome to men, how explain them other than as the stirring of our\nelements quickened by radiations from the unknown?  The trouble of\nthose stricken by a sudden and mortal fate, their inexplicable\ndistress, the panic-stricken flock of teeming thoughts vainly seeking\nescape in their shadowy subconsciousness--all this morbid poignant\npossessed state must be due to our cells' foreknowledge that shortly\ntheir architecture will be changed.  Our independent life puts no\nobstacle in the way of that universal ebb and flow, which sets\nthrough us and subjects us to the same law of eternal change which\nrules the rest of chaos.\n\nFor these reasons the close of a career should not be to us a\nmelancholy sight.  To be born, to exist, to die should seem simple,\nnatural, unchangeable things, only shades of difference even when\nconsidered to the farthest obscurity of their never-ending course.\nBut to be eternal, there is a vision which exceeds!  To be eternal!\n\nThe universe withstands, unmoved, the passing of trees and beings and\nthings.  In its season everything must defile before the mirror of\nchangeless time.  Plants in their fading go the way of suns as they\ngrow cold, of dreams as they pass on waking, of an insect as it\nperishes.  In the imperishable universe things are born only to die.\nWe, as atoms of the stream of life, can stiffen ourselves with the\nknowledge that we suffer only the common fate of all created things;\nthat the same fate rules both material and spiritual things, men and\nstars following one curve in their careers; and that in nature no\nsituation can endure unaltered.\n\nAs we dwell on it, the idea of being eternal becomes impossible to\nour spirits.  To be infinitely active for ever, what a prospect of\noverwhelming sameness!  Perpetual life would be for us no less than a\nnever-ending sleeplessness.  We would have to endure with a constant\nendurance of constant circumstances, while others about us were born\nand died, while plants grew green and withered, whilst the rivers\nran, and the suns burned themselves out; we would have to watch the\nebb and flow of things, and the measured flight of hours, the\nevolution of form, the levelling of fine distinction.  The same\ndreams, the same senses would function, without ever a stop, without\never a relieving variation--what a vision of weariness and monotonous\ndespair!  Like a great wide eye in which were mirrored chaos and its\nthousand ghostly shapes, an eye limpid but glassy, strained and\naching with its long stare, over which it was ordered that no easeful\nlid might ever close.\n\nEverlasting life for men an everlasting insomnia?  Let us call to\nmind some of those nights when sleep would not visit us, when\nopen-eyed we gazed into the dark as though it were luminous, our\ntemples all one ring of ice, and in our stagnant veins a biding\nweariness which nothing could relieve.  Life throbbed in our ears\nwith an unchanging beat.  The air about us might be loud with rumour,\nor be silent; there might be a clock ticking, or a storm raging in\nthe night outside, but anyhow, and however our mood, the\nsleeplessness always in the end prevailed over all circumstances, and\nknotted up the customary arabesques of our sensation into one\npattern, mechanical and terrifying in its regularity.  A cold terror\nwould take hold of us--the lucid ordered distraction of severe\ninsomnia--and we would be lost in a passionless despair, in that\ndesert of opaque oppression which is ultimate fatigue.\n\nEach cell in us called aloud on sleep, while our whole being thrummed\nwith the rhythm of life.  The entire existence of the aged and the\nvery sick is an unended longing for repose, and no small part of the\nagony and horror of a death-bed is this cruel wakefulness which holds\nthe eyes ever on the watch.  Eternal peace has no terrors for the\ndying: but if that necessary nescience was not to follow after, if\ntheir wakefulness was to endure world without end--what then?\n\nDespite our pains life is sweet, while it runs within its proper\nbounds; but it would be intolerable if it were endless.  On this\nmortal earth the giant tree had passed into its last rest, leaving\nthe general current of life behind it to continue unchecked.  The\nsequoia, even if it had had the power, would not have been sorry no\nlonger to breathe in the odours of the world, nor feel the sunlight,\nnor pump the sap up and down its weather-beaten trunk.  At its hour\nof death it was desiring death, the great sleep in which lay repose,\nwith all its strength, even with its finest stomata, its inmost\ngrain, its remotest root; and if this was the issue of its seven\nthousand years, such should be the issue of a dog's corresponding\nfifteen years, of a man's seventy years, of a planet's millions.\n\nIn the midst of eternity an age is not so long.\n\n\n\n\nCONCLUSION\n\n_Within a Cell_\n\nThrough all the changing pomp of seasons, while the sun showered down\nits yellow rays, while the rain striped it with grey markings, and\nthe snow lay heavy and white upon it, the vision of the tree was\npresent to me, first as a colossal column, standing up in heaven,\nthen as a broken ruin, prostrate on the ground.  As through a light\nhaze I have tried to distinguish the splendour of its life, and the\ntragedy of its death: and all this while the blue and green and grey\ncountry in which the sequoia lived and died has become in some degree\nmy own country, a part of me.  I grew to love those distant hills,\nmodulating away to invisibility on some shining day of spring; I\nlearned to feel the sadness of the autumn twilights which made the\nbackground of the pine-tree go so pale and lifeless and desolate.  I\ntraced at length the slow circulation of the giant's sap, and became\nsensitive like the tree to light and shadow, to all the influences,\nexciting or soporific, of the type of country in which I had placed\nit.  Nevertheless, all this creation of a vast landscape, and the\nhuge form of the tree, took shape, endured, and ended in a tiny\nspace, one of those imperceptible and secret compartments called\ncells, parts of our bodies immeasurable by human wit.\n\nOutside my window the world was growing feeble in the failing autumn,\nbut from the white page which I slowly darkened with my writing\nbloomed for my sight a summer scene of green and gold, where once the\ngiant tree had stood, but which now was again become clear ground and\nazure sky: and I told myself how shortly my memory-cell would produce\nfor me a new mind-landscape, new images, new sentiments.  Such\ndreams, born within ourselves, have the vividness of real incidents,\nwhile they last: to such a degree that it seems questionable whether\nthe physical shocks we undergo and the palpable matter we encounter\nare really the intensest experiences of our lives.  May it not be\nrather that our sharpest colouring comes from the volatile and\nobscure matter of our ideas and dreams, with its rich palette of\ninnumerable shades?  Only by means of the abstract part of our nature\ndo we commune with the universe.  Our likes and dislikes, our\ndelights and despairs are not the issue of our carnal parts,\noffspring of our blood and nerves, except in so far as these are\nsubmissive conductors of the hidden reactions of our imagination.  A\nsingle dream will change the current of our life, and our actions are\nthe product of the powerful but hidden inner world of our minds.\n\nSo that it is our imagination which rules our conduct.  Our physical\nperformance is the reflex of our conception of the deed.  Our will is\nthe developed image of the dark, fertile, capricious, imperceptible\nforce which we call fancy.  We can mingle this fancy in almost\nmaterial fashion with all the things and beings on our path through\nlife, so strange in composition is this substance or fluid.\nEverything which is ours, even our passions, obey its commands.  It\ncan make us chaste or ardent, will purify our flesh in the presence\nof our sisters, and inflame the same matter when our thoughts turn\nconcupiscently towards a woman with whom we can feasibly have\ndealings.  Fanatics owe their superhuman endurance during horrible\nmutilations of the flesh to this same power, which also gives to\nmartyrs the perfect calm of soul in which they tread the threshold of\nan awful death.\n\nMay not this flexible mistress of our understanding be made of the\nsame essence as the motive force of the universe?  Not our reason but\nour imagination enables us to grasp the conception of illimitable\nchaos, to comprehend the music of the farthest spheres, to overleap\nall distance and cast the sum of the faintest stars.  By it we can\ndistinguish between world and world, in their far-fetched and\nfleeting changes from the incandescent minute of the nucleus to that\nlast frozen silence in which the dead planets circulate: and also by\nits means we can see the smallness of things, even when they are\natoms inexpressibly small.\n\nNot that our imagination is universal.  There are causes we will\nnever fathom, effects we can never know, forces too occult for us.\nYet we have monitions of them; their flickering image hovers\nsometimes just beyond our grasp, their last repeated echo dies away\nin a murmur just too weak for us to understand.\n\nTherefore in the depths of our subconsciousness the immane with its\nthousand heads mirrors itself vaguely, like a wide field agreeing to\ncompress its forms and rarefy its details within the tiny sphere of a\nprismatic drop of water.\n\nOur dreams take shape, and endure and fade, having seemed reality\nwhile they endured.  Images and sounds and scents of strange\nmarvellous richness dance restlessly through our inner world.\n\nThis other life which palpitates in us is often more engrossing to us\nthan our public life, and always more fickle.  It has no bounds, so\nfar as supply of incident and vision is concerned: but is absolutely\nlimited (as much as is our physical life) in its extent of influence.\nIts scope is for ourselves alone.  Our designs are made and our\nactions prepared in this domain of our dark fancy, and the adventures\nwe there conceive only lose in richness and range when they are\ntranslated into physical terms.  Of that realm we are absolute\nmaster, and we rule our universe thence.  In it time and space both\nbow at our behest.  By a simple whim we transpose seasons in a\nmoment, that we may inhabit tropics and the frozen north at once.\nElements and creatures and things are at our mercy.  In this world,\nand only in this world, are we given to know freedom and omnipotence.\n\nHow do things go in this secret and magical realm of ours, where we\nhave power to work the miracles denied us in daily life?  There we\ncan love and hate, as we would wish to do, physically, can taste the\nfill of love's joys, and all of ambition or of crime.  We can change\nour shape, attend the marvellous revels of fairy-land, witness\nhorrible massacres, contemplate the incredible clash of suns.  In\nthis our private world neither days nor hours exist to limit us.  We\ncan live a thousand centuries in a moment, or spin out a moment\nacross unending years.  This dream-control of matter empowers us\nsomewhat to understand the terrible play of events across eternity\nand the infinite, for it must proceed rather in the same manner: and\nsince the thousand flying shades of chaos can be reflected in our\nsubconsciousness, it follows that our fancy and our dreams must be\nmade of the same stuff as the nameless force which rules the universe.\n\nThe forest giant also had its life in a dream--a life which seemed to\nlast for more than seventy centuries, in the precise surroundings\nwherein stood this substantial ghost.  The dream which made it did\nnot fade wholly with its death, for to my fancy clouds of wood-dust,\nwith their sad musty taste, seemed yet to float after its fall over\nthe vacant place where the tree had stood.\n\nMy memories of the landscape in which the dream had passed endured\nafter the ending of the dream.  Birds seemed to fly over the\nprostrate giant, and thousands of busy insects flitted about its\nhollow trunk.  The sound of the water came yet to me from far off,\nwhile the sunlight was golden where the tree had breathed, and night\ndrew its dark curtain round the spot.  A mighty rumour filled the\nspace about--for in the subtle world of dream lively truth is given\nby our imagination to shapes and sounds and smells, which become ours\nto create, to destroy, or to revive at will.\n\nAnd from my middle place, hanging between the external world which is\nours and the inner world which belongs to me alone, I ask myself,\nhesitating and afraid, if our dreams are not perhaps more than\ndreams, if we ourselves are not perhaps creations of some fancy\ngreater than our own, greater even than our understanding?  In which\ncase the external universe might be to the all-seeing Eye what the\nworld of our imagination is to us--another way of saying that one\nsubstance makes substantial the mighty whole, but that the means, the\nforces, the expression of it are innumerable.\n\nIt is a strange speculation that we may be ourselves products of the\ncreative thought of some being beyond our thought: yet very\nfar-reaching is the power of our imagination which can pass from star\nto star, can people space, and conjure up new worlds, can shadow out\nto itself the incomprehensible.  It is afraid of no height and of no\ndepth: but one idea escapes it, gives it dizzy pause--speculation\nupon the beginning and the end of creation.  Yet in time our spirit\ncalms itself, grows resigned to the idea that there was no beginning,\nand will be no end, only an interminable progression.  Such is the\nonly sober escape from the unbearable notions of a precise beginning\nand a pre-destined final end, ideas which if driven home would wreck\nour peace.  A beginning--but how could this be?  Whence could it\ncome? and when and how? and an end--but what could come after that?\nWould it be the starting-point of a new evolution, of a fresh\ndeparture in time?  Besides, the very ideas are absurd,\nself-contradictory.  Nature has no exceptions, no isolated events.\n\nIn such a haze of strange ideas and confused visions my dream draws\nto its close.  However, we do not make them of hazardous and fugitive\nweb.  Into them are woven real figments of our life and immanent\nseconds from the stock of unchanging time.  Their elements will float\nforth across the universe after the dissolution of the adventures\nwhose apparent, if mental, form they have for the moment composed.\nThese scattered moments of my faded dream will distribute an\nimpression of the life of the great pine-tree, which was born and\nlived and died in its place, till the sense of it pierces to a tiny\nimmeasurable point, one of those secret places which we call our\ncells ... and then it seems to me that there rises a thin mist of\nrusset wood-powder, amid a heartrending savour of old age....","title":"The Forest Giant","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":25679}