nor of Art — these are moments of the Infinite. 

 Such moments are mine when I look upon some 

 strange aspect of biological beauty which is asso- 

 ciated with a physiological horror, such as is founcl 

 in the example of the sea-spider. Then it is that 

 I forget the lens and the forceps and the brush. No 

 longer am I a cold and critical investigator, calmly 

 seeking naught but facts and pictures; the heart 

 beats faster, a glow begins to quicken, and I be- 

 come as one with even this most unprepossessing of 

 Nature's progeny; for I know that it, too, is warm 

 and human. I see it, not as a seeming excrescence 

 on the tree of life, invoking dread and loathing, 

 but as a perfect response to an environment to 

 which it has adapted itself with even better grace, 

 perhaps, than have I to mine. And I know that 

 although our separate branches are remotely apart, 

 the vitalizing sap is identical in us both — we are 

 the same in essence, we are kindred . . . Even 

 more — who can say whether, in the destiny of life 

 on this planet — or, if one will have it so, on some 

 faded star still Cooling in the mightiest reach of 

 the cosmos — the ganglion will have been less 

 mighty, less important than the brain, ere the final 

 phase of organic evolution comes to a close*? 



[39] 



