The most objectionable form of this rigidity is found in mechanism. I
sometimes hear ladies talking about "real lace" and am on such
occasions inclined to speak of my real boots. They mean, I find, not
lace that is the reverse of ghostly, but simply that which bears the
impress of personality. It is lace which is made by hand and shows the
marks of hand work. Little irregularities are in it, contrasting it
with the machine sort, where every piece is identical with every other
piece. It might be more accurately called personal lace. The machine
kind is no less real--unfortunately--but mechanism is hopelessly dull,
says the same thing day after day, and never can say anything else.

Now though this coarse form of monotonous process nowhere appears in
what we call the world of nature, a restriction substantially similar
does; for natural objects vary slowly and within the narrowest limits.
Outside such orderly variations, they are subjected to external and
distorting agencies effecting changes in them regardless of their
gains. Branches of trees have their wayward and subtle curvatures, and
are anything but mechanical in outline. But none the less are they
helpless, unprogressive, and incapable of learning. The forces which
play upon them, being various, leave a truly varied record. But each
of these forces was an invariable one, and their several influences
cannot be sorted, judged, and selected by the tree with reference to
its future growth. Criticism and choice have no place here, and
accordingly anything like improvement from year to year is impossible.

The case of us human beings would be the same if we were altogether
managed by the sure, swift, and easy forces of nature. Progress would
cease. We should move on our humdrum round as fixedly constituted, as
submissive to external influence, and with as little exertion of
intelligence as the dumb objects we behold. Every power within us