blood. But this is only a poet's way of saying that civilization is a
tree that is nourished, not by rain and snow, but by the tears and
blood of the patriots and prophets of yesterday.

Fortunately, in manifold ways, nature and life witness to the
universality of vicarious service and suffering. Indeed, the very
basis of the doctrine of evolution is the fact that the life of the
higher rests upon the death of the lower. The astronomers tell us that
the sun ripens our harvests by burning itself up. Each golden sheaf,
each orange bough, each bunch of figs, costs the sun thousands of tons
of carbon. Geike, the geologist, shows us that the valleys grow rich
and deep with soil through the mountains, growing bare and being
denuded of their treasure. Beholding the valleys of France and the
plains of Italy all gilded with corn and fragrant with deep grass,
where the violets and buttercups wave and toss in the summer wind,
travelers often forget that the beauty of the plains was bought, at a
great price, by the bareness of the mountains. For these mountains are
in reality vast compost heaps, nature's stores of powerful stimulants.
Daily the heat swells the flakes of granite; daily the frost splits
them; daily the rains dissolve the crushed stone into an impalpable
dust; daily the floods sweep the rich mineral foods down into the
starving valleys. Thus the glory of the mountains is not alone their
majesty of endurance, but also their patient, passionate beneficence as
they pour forth all their treasures to feed richness to the pastures,
to wreathe with beauty each distant vale and glen, to nourish all
waving harvest fields. This death of the mineral is the life of the
vegetable.

If now we descend from the mountains to explore the secrets of the sea,
Maury and Guyot show us the isles where palm trees wave and man builds