ut three feet of the distance that separated
us, when, one day, the moment came when it could maintain itself
outright in the air no longer, and it fell to the floor. "Poor thing,"
I said, "your faith was blind, but it was real. You knew there was a
support somewhere, and you tried all ways to find it." This is Nature.
She goes around the circle, she tries every direction, sure that she
will find a way at some point. Animals in cages behave in a similar
way, looking for a means of escape. In the vineyard I see the
grape-vines reaching out blindly in all directions for some hold for
their tendrils. The young arms seize upon one another and tighten
their hold as if they had at last found what they were in search of.
Stop long enough beside one of the vines, and it will cling to you and
run all over you.

Behold the tumble-bug with her ball of dung by the roadside; where is
she going with it? She is going anywhere and everywhere; she changes
her direction, like the vine, whenever she encounters an obstacle. She
only knows that somewhere there is a depression or a hole in which her
ball with its egg can rest secure, and she keeps on tumbling about
till she finds it, or maybe digs one, or comes to grief by the foot of
some careless passer-by. This, again, is Nature's way, randomly and
tirelessly seeking her ends. When we look over a large section of
history, we see that it is man's way, too, or Nature's way in man. His
progress has been a blind groping, the result of endless
experimentation, and all his failures and mistakes could not be
written in a book. How he has tumbled about with his ball, seeking the
right place for it, and how many times has he come to grief! All his
successes have been lucky hits: steam, electricity, representative
government, printing--how long he groped for them before he found
them! There is always and everywhere the Darwinian tendency to
variation, to seek new forms, to improve upon the past; and man is
under this law, the same as is the rest of nature. One generation of
men, like one generation of leaves, becomes the fertilizer of the
next; failures only enrich the soil or make smoother the way.

There are so many conflicting forces and interests, and the conditions
of success are so complex! If the seed fall here, it will not
germinate; if there, it will be drowned or washed away; if yonder, it
will find too sharp competition. There are only a few places where it
will find all the conditions