AS THE BIOLOGIST SEES IT 



mud. John Muir s dog, Stickeen, seems 

 to have had no less faith in his master 

 at whose insistence he leaped the danger 

 ous glacier crevasse that seemed too wide. 

 Had Stickeen a soul? The young robins 

 that make their first flutterings from the 

 nest perhaps have faith in the parent 

 birds assurances. Are they soulful? 



But other people mean other things 

 by soul : they mean the creative imagina 

 tion, the capacity for a self-expression of 

 the wonderful things in them. Man s 

 mind is so wonderful, as evidenced by 

 his discoveries, his inventions, his poetry 

 and music and painting, that you say 

 there simply must be more than brain- 

 cells and nerve fibrils as basis for them; 

 there must be soul in him. But a simple 

 physical injury or disharmony in these 

 material body tissues means a prompt 

 end to all these wonders. A boy com 

 panion of mine was called, because of 

 what he could do in music, a genius. 

 He fell one day from a gate post and 

 struck his head against a stone. In 



