The universal mysterious analogy of all life again forces itself on our reeling minds. These millions of shoots and needles in the pine were produced with such profusion only to grow old and die, like lives passing away, while the great tree stood steady in the midst of them, rooted and intact. Our nerve cells and tissues in a like fashion renew themselves day and night, without our giving them a thought, so absorbed are we in "living our lives" to our full bent. The pine-tree lived on the subsidiary lives of each of its utricles, and exhausted something of its reserve force with each generation of them passed by: and so do we grow old with each of their deaths as the tiny cells in us die without our heeding.
Life seems to whirl like a top, getting apparently the momentum for a new spin from each spin past, but actually failing steadily towards its final rest. Each slipping moment leaves us inevitably nearer to our end, however it may seem to give us spring and key for fuller existence. Especially in spring-time does a new life seem to be working in us. A mute exhilaration flows through all our nerves, making them tingle like the needles of the giant pine. Beings and things open in one great vibration, whose repercussion is felt even in the dark places underground. Subtle aspirations emanate from here and there, and cross one another confusedly: yet in their varied and varying shapes whirling aloft in the air, inspiring living creatures or burgeoning in plants, they are only multiple aspects of one central influence. These very diverse expressions are all products of one faculty, vivified by the same ichor.
A puff of wind stirred the twigs of the forest giant. The sun was setting in a western sky heaped with purple and violet and rosy clouds. There was a confused movement of many forms of life in the darkling wood, whose smallness beside it made the sequoia tree seem a disproportionate sentinel. Twilight slid into darkness, dissipated early by a silver moon. A cloud of insects rose up the reddish trunk of the pine. They glittered or suggested red and blue and emerald green, blended or particoloured. Their tiny feet swarmed up the rude bark silently. On the ground other tiny insects gleamed greenly through the grass, or darkened its sandy surface with queer black shadows. They paired, in obedience to the instinct which had made the dainty butterflies all the afternoon flutter together intimately. The echo of croaking frogs came keenly from the distance, through the myriad smells of evening.