Excerpt from The Elements of Christian Science: A Treatise Upon Moral Philosophy and Practice Naturalists tell us that the oak has a northern circle, beyond which it does not grow. It has also a limit that is set for it towards the south Thus it has a region, marked out by definite limits, upon the surface of the earth, within which it grows, and out of which it cannot live. In the language of natural science, this is called its Habitat. Within that habitat it lives, varied in vigor and appearance according to circumstances. The same tree, in sheltered valleys, shoots up a taller and more slender stem than the oak that braves the storm upon the mountain-side. The timber also of that oak, that has grown slowly in the clefts of the rock, has a roughness and a knotty strength that is never found in that which has started up rapidly from rich and cultivated soils. All these differences, and a thousand more, may be produced, and exist in oaks that have come from acorns of the same parent-tree. To explain this, we know that all of these trees had, each of them, a constitution, a germ of vegetable life peculiar to the oak, suited to take up supplies from external things, and to grow thereby, because it is a life. To use the example again, - wherever the tree grows, in the North or the South, in the valley or upon the mountains, from the elefted rock or in the fertile plains, - there, amidst all variety of circumstance, the constitution is the same, - if the tree is anywhere capable of living, it is as an oak that it lives, and not as any other tree. Position modifies, but never wholly destroys or wholly changes the nature. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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