this fearful misuse of the nervous force, and the
inheritance will be so strong that at best we can have only little
invalids. How great the necessity seems for the effort to get back into
Nature's ways when we reflect upon the possibilities of a continued
disobedience!

To be sure, Nature has Repose itself and does not have to work for it.
Man is left free to take it or not as he chooses. But before he is able
to receive it he has personal tendencies to restlessness to overcome.
And more than that, there are the inherited nervous habits of
generations of ancestors to be recognized and shunned. But repose is an
inmost law of our being, and the quiet of Nature is at our command much
sooner than we realize, if we want it enough to work for it steadily
day by day. Nothing will increase our realization of the need more than
a little daily thought of the quiet in the workings of Nature and the
consequent appreciation of our own lack. Ruskin tells the story with
his own expressive power when he says, "Are not the elements of ease on
the face of all the greatest works of creation? Do they not say, not
there has been a great _effort_ here, but there has been a great power
here?"

The greatest act, the only action which we know to be power in itself,
is the act of Creation. Behind that action there lies a great Repose.
We are part of Creation, we should be moved by its laws. Let us shun
everything we see to be in the way of our own best power of action in
muscle, nerve, senses, mind, and heart. Who knows the new perception
and strength, the increased power for use that is open to us if we will
but cease to be an obstruction?

Freedom within the limits of Nature's laws, and indeed there is no
freedom without those limits, is best studied and realized in the
growth of all plants,--in the openness of the branch of a vine to
receive the sap from the main stem, in the free circulation of the sap
in a tree and in all vegetable organisms.

Imagine the branch of a vine endowed with the power to grow according
to the laws which govern it, or to ignore and disobey those laws.
Imagine the same branch having made up its vegetable mind that it could
live its own life apart from the vine, twisting its various fibres into
all kinds of knots and snarls, according to its own idea of living, so
that the sap from the main stem could only reach it in a minimum
quantity. What a dearth of leaf, flower, and fruit would appear in the
branch! Yet