The clothes which you wear once were on the back of a sheep grazing on
some distant hillside. The chair in which you sit once swayed in the
forest midst the soughing winds. The pen with which I am writing once was
imbedded deep in some far-away mountain range. But that occult genius--the
human brain, conceived the idea of creating that wool, and wood, and ore
into a higher state of usefulness, and at this juncture was compelled to
acknowledge the infinite necessity of a co-worker; hence, the brain
employs the hand as an external agent to put into force the impressions
which it--the brain--receives from the phenomena of nature.

Moreover, the law of your growth is contingent upon the exercise of these
faculties. The brain is the judicial function and the hand the executive.
Together these two powers qualify you for the master-workman. If you allow
them to exist in the passive sense, you become an apathetic segment in
the midst of a great world pulsing with life around you. You merely add
one to the population, instead of counting for a potential and energizing
influence. If you lift the weight of a clock the smallest fraction of an
inch, the mechanism will cease to operate. And the relaxation of your will
from the great obligation of life will cause your powers to atrophy and
improperly to perform their work. With Browning, "Man was made to grow,
not stop."

Activity and not atrophy is the law of life. Action is the expression of
that vital force called energy, and energy moves the world. The keynote of
the natural world is action: the earth revolves, the river moves in its
course, the tempest rages, the mountain acts from volcanic phenomena,
vegetation grows, etc. In every tiny seed lies concealed this mysterious
force--only a spark of life which, encouraged by nature, springs into a
waving harvest.