then the distance dropped to
six inches, then to four. I think the runner finally gave it up and
stopped reaching out. Each group of leaves apparently draws its main
sustenance from the one next behind it, and when this one fails to reach
the soil it loses heart and can give little succor to the next in front.
The result is that the stools become smaller and smaller, and the
distances between them less and less, down the whole line.

Nature's methods are seen in the little as well as in the big, and these
little purple runners of the vine pushing out in all directions show the
all-round-the-circle efforts of Nature as clearly as do the revolving
orbs in sidereal space. Her living impulses go out in all directions.
She scatters her seeds upon the barren as well as upon fertile spots.
She sends rains and dews upon the sea as well as upon the land. She
knows not our parsimony nor our prudence. We say she is blind, but
without eyes she is all-seeing; only her creatures who live to
particular ends, and are limited to particular spheres, have need of
eyes. Nature has all time and all space and all ends. Delays and failure
she knows not. If the runners of her strawberries do not reach their
goal, the trouble corrects itself; they finally stop searching for it in
that direction, and the impulse of the plant goes out stronger and
fuller on other sides.

If the rains were especially designed to replenish our springs and
supply our growing crops, the clouds might reasonably be expected to
limit their benefactions, as do our sprinkling carts; but the rains are
older than are we and our crops, and it is we who must adjust ourselves
to them, not they to us.

The All-Seeing, then, has no need of our specialized vision. Does the
blood need eyes to find its way to the heart and lungs? Does the wind
need eyes to find the fertile spots upon which to drop its winged seeds?
It drops them upon all spots, and each kind in due time finds its proper
habitat, the highly specialized, such as those of the marsh plants,
hitting their marks as surely as do others.

Our two eyes serve us well because our footsteps are numbered and must
go in a particular direction, but the goal of all-seeing Nature is
everywhere, and she arrives before she starts. She has no plan and no
method, and she is not governed.

These conceptions express too little, not too much. Nature's movements
are circular; her definite ends are enclosed in universal ends. The
rain