comprised of a trunk, bifurcating and rebifurcating into the most delicate,
hair-like threads, symmetrically arranged. We are struck with its singular
beauty. And, moreover--and here we drop from our kneeling into a sitting
posture--this also we remark: of that same exact shape and outline is our
thorn-tree seen against the sky in mid-winter: of that shape also is
delicate metallic tracery between our rocks; in that exact path does our
water flow when without a furrow we lead it from the dam; so shaped are the
antlers of the horned beetle. How are these things related that such deep
union should exist between them all? Is it chance? Or, are they not all
the fine branches of one trunk, whose sap flows through us all? That would
explain it. We nod over the gander's inside.

This thing we call existence; is it not a something which has its roots far
down below in the dark, and its branches stretching out into the immensity
above, which we among the branches cannot see? Not a chance jungle; a
living thing, a One. The thought gives us intense satisfaction, we cannot
tell why.

We nod over the gander; then start up suddenly, look into the blue sky,
throw the dead gander and the refuse into the dam, and go to work again.

And so, it comes to pass in time, that the earth ceases for us to be a
weltering chaos. We walk in the great hall of life, looking up and round
reverentially. Nothing is despicable--all is meaning-full; nothing is
small--all is part of a whole, whose beginning and end we know not. The
life that throbs in us is a beginning and end we know not. The life that
throbs in us is a pulsation from it; too mighty for our comprehension, not
too small.

And so, it comes to pass at last, that whereas the sky was at first a small