Evidence of Purpose, pp. Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me. Tell me, if you have understanding. There's a real power here. It is amazing that trees can turn gravel and bitter salts into these soft-lipped lobes, as if I were to bite down on a granite slab and start to swell, bud, and flower.
Trees seem to do their feats so effortlessly.
Every year a given tree creates absolutely from scratch ninety-nine percent of its living parts. He may not be right, but I like his adjectives. The patch of bluets in the grass may not be long on brains, but it might be, at least in a very small way, awake. The trees especially seem to bespeak a generosity of spirit. I suspect that the real moral thinkers end up, wherever they may start, in botany.