In all the upward march of matter and force, there has never
been one single crisis and conflict where the higher has not
been victorious over the lower. Witness the first struggle,
between the mineral and the vegetable. The marble is hard,
and the moss seeks to spread its robe of olive and velvet
thereupon; slowly the marble crumbles, and dies; the moss lives
and grows--it could not be otherwise; the moss is the higher
and therefore victorious. The husbandman plants his seed of
corn. The seed dies, the little plant lives, and becomes a
great stalk, with corn in the milk, and then the full corn in
the ear--it could not be otherwise; the golden stalk is the
higher, and must be victorious. In the forest there grow a
hundred kinds of jack-grapes, small, black and aciduous, and
a thousand orange-trees are there, bitter, and with acid that
sets the teeth on edge. But on the edge of the forest, steeped
in sunshine and blest with room, there grows one grape that
is purple and one orange that is sweet. And at last all the
thousand acid vines and the ten thousand bitter orange-trees
perish, while the one purple vine survives, takes feet to itself
and journeys to all vineyards, while the orange of the golden
heart gets wings for itself and crosses vale and mountain--it
could not be otherwise, they are the higher. And never once has
the law been reversed.--N. D. HILLIS.
(1276)