FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTIONS 551 



views? Must we strip our great forest of trees and make them into 

 bare poles from which to swing our electric wires? Should it be 

 possible to describe any human habitations as packing-boxes pierced 

 with holes? Is it really a useful purpose which would take for any 

 common end the glorious redwood forests, planted before the Chris- 

 tian era, "for the service of man" indeed, but for what service - 

 to build him a house --to kindle him a fire -- or to waken his soul 

 to a knowledge of its own value? 



Here, then, is not a danger to be guarded against, but a want to 

 be supplied. We need the imagination in the highest departments 

 of technology, but there is at present no distinct training for it, 

 and there should be, if only to help a man to realize the unity of 

 his own mental being and the mighty unity of Nature, which could 

 give us a type of the fixity of law in the rainbow, of all colors the 

 most beautiful and ephemeral, of all forms the strongest, throwing 

 across the clouds, still black with threatening, its perfect arch, 



" A glorious thing that dauntless, deathless, 

 Sprang across them and stood steady." 



