his homes and cities midst rich tropic fruits. There scientists find
that the coral islands were reared above the waves by myriads of living
creatures that died vicariously that man might live. And everywhere
nature exhibits the same sacrificial principle. Our treasures of coal
mean that vast forests have risen and fallen again for our factories
and furnaces. Nobody is richer until somebody is poorer. Evermore the
vicarious exchange is going on. The rock decays and feeds the moss and
lichen. The moss decays to feed the shrub. The shrub perishes that
the tree may have food and growth. The leaves of the tree fall that
its boughs may blossom and bear fruit. The seeds ripen to serve the
birds singing in all the boughs. The fruit falls to be food for man.
The harvests lend man strength for his commerce, his government, his
culture and conscience. The lower dies vicariously that the higher may
live. Thus nature achieves her gifts only through vast expenditures.

It is said that each of the new guns for the navy costs $100,000. But
the gun survives only a hundred explosions, so that every shot costs
$1,000. Tyndall tells us that each drop of water sheathes electric
power sufficient to charge 100,000 Leyden jars and blow the Houses of
Parliament to atoms. Farraday amazes us by his statement of the energy
required to embroider a violet or produce a strawberry. To untwist the
sunbeam and extract the rich strawberry red, to refine the sugar, and
mix its flavor, represents heat sufficient to run an engine from
Liverpool to London or from Chicago to Detroit. But because nature
does her work noiselessly we must not forget that each of her gifts
also involves tremendous expenditure.

This law of vicarious service holds equally in the intellectual world.
The author buys his poem or song with his life-blood. While traveling
north from London midst a heavy snow-storm, Lord Bacon descended from