ourselves that there are an infinity of creations, of every sort and kind and lot and fate in our universe, ranging from suns to microscopic cells, each subject to tens of thousands of varying conditions, and tending towards an incalculable number of predestined ends--and it is vain for our curious but purblind spirits to try to estimate separately or to distinguish these appalling problems, for our limitations in kind forbid us ever to know the infinity of evolutions in earth and heaven, in the depths of the seas, in the depths of the earth. It is impossible that we should ever learn what are the hidden powers which sway our courses, what are the unknown and unsearchable emanations which breathe around us, or over us, and give us in hardly perceptible fashion a sense of confused joy, a vague sadness, or some heedless inexplicable fear. CHAPTER 4 _Contrasts which are not Contrasts_ On the earth it was spring: and the excitement of it drove underground. Our sprouting seed was caught up in this frenzy of living, expanded itself, and pushed downwards and upwards in a double movement, under cover of that odd buckler, the pileorhiza. The light attracted it; but at the same time it plunged deeper into the night, for there it found hidden sympathies, and encouragements which made it fierce and greedy. It grew enormously, draining to itself the scattered nourishment about it. If other existences were starved thereby, so much the worse for them. Not long ago our plant was a humble seed, ready to beg its tiny life from each powerful menacing blade of grass. To-day it was a successful bully, drinking up all the ichor of its patch of soil: and such conduct is the general rule, even with us men. When we are weak and know it, we are timid crawling things, hating all powers since they seem directed against us: but let us gain a little strength, and we grow proportionately rude, beating down the weaker. So true is it that evolution in nature is only a re-direction of energy. The Eye which controls the universe really seems to have foreseen and planned everything; and things which appear unjust or horrible to us may appear so only because we do not know the full logic of their existence. It is pleasant to imagine what happens deep down in that secret mansion of the lower earth. The press of life can be no less there than on the face of the ground. Yet we call it a mystery, and rank it with all that is beyond our sense, with that class of event which even our imaginations fail to visualize precisely. If only we could see the sequoia root with our eyes, or had some yet unexpressed means with which to analyse or share its likes and dislikes, watch its battles, follow its sorrows, its joys! Why were we not endowed with some special sense able to feel the satisfied tremor of the growing root when it made contact with kindly elements in the blank night?