COMPULSION OF NATURE-ACTION 319 



of her conscious life was little perturbed. On a free 

 and easy logic, and without mental compunctions, she 

 rode rough-shod over minor obstructions straight for 

 her goal. 



Science, although not necessarily more cautious, 

 took the longer and safer way to reach her conclusions. 

 She had from the outset the stolid, neuro-muscular 

 temperament of the artisan, rather than that of the 

 master, the singer, or the spinner of alluring verbal 

 webs. She was intensely interested, and wholly ab- 

 sorbed, in the beauty and perfection of the mechanical 

 details of nature; perpetually losing herself in the end- 

 less mazes of purposeful adaptation of form and move- 

 ment to definite constructive ends; watching in dumb 

 and lingering amazement the big and little elements of 

 the living and non-living world lose themselves in one 

 another and free themselves again; or turn and halt, 

 rise and march, and fall and separate, in an endless 

 swirl of music, color, and pattern, apparently with no 

 other cause or reason than their own good will, or in- 

 herent impulse. 



Science could not logically unite the elements of 

 nature into distinct mechanisms, and these mechan- 

 isms into one living, self-sustaining system, until she 

 was better able to estimate the capacity of nature's 

 resources, and to visualize the connecting links, the 

 reservoirs, and the pathways through space and time, 

 over which the driving power of nature was received 

 and delivered, or held in reserve. 



She was unable convincingly to summarize in gen- 

 eral terms her multitudinous impressions, or to visual- 

 ize the physical and organic universe as a unit until 

 her discoveries of more comprehensive laws, such as 



