424 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



of a less wild strain of blood. There was a personality like unto 

 himself in each beast, bird and fish that he knew; a genius loci in 

 every waterfall and mountain glen. The forces of nature were personal 

 elements in his philosophy. He lived, this man of the long-forgotten 

 past, as all men live — getting his food, begetting his kind, loving, 

 hating, fighting, rejoicing in the coming of the spring, pleased with his 

 own person and its adornment, repeating the tales of his forefathers 

 about the fire — then vanishing into the all-containing soil of the earth 

 whence he came. 



What man, once quickened by the spirit of the earth and touched by 

 its thousand sweet influences, would ever think of resigning this mortal 

 inheritance, with all its certainty of dissolution, for an immortality in 

 some unknown, untried sphere of existence? The perennially hopeful 

 day; the charm of sex; the friendliness of fellowship; the mating of 

 man and woman; the birth and nurture of children; the buffet of the 

 elements ; the warmth and glow of fire ; the delight of working muscles ; 

 memory-haunting smells ; food and drink ; labor and rest ; the night and 

 sleep — these are man's heritage and joy. 



If the old pagan spirit still dwells in the hearts of men it surely 

 makes for the best and sweetest that life holds. In this spirit a man 

 may come to regard the dissolution of his body with some degree of 

 complacency, knowing that his mortal parts will again become incor- 

 porate with the soil of the earth, and the grass, and the all-sustaining 

 air — things which entered into his being through all the days of his 

 life — and yet trusting that the best of him — the part that found joy in 

 living — will still find joy, somehow and somewhere, in the realm of 

 beneficent nature. 



