THE UNFATHOMED UNIVERSE 29 



centration. It has been said, though it is a dangerous half- 

 truth, that the worst kind of comparative psychologist is 

 the observer who is devoted to his animals. 



Especially since Darwin's day, we have been learning 

 in biology to see creatures in their spatial and temporal 

 linkages, but it cannot be denied that the predominant 

 method of science is analytic and deliberately abstract, 

 whereas the tendency of feeling is always to see things whole 

 synoptically. As Goethe said, " these dissecting opera- 

 tions, ever and ever continued, produce likewise many a 

 disadvantage; the living is indeed analysed into elements, 

 but it cannot be brought together again out of them and 

 animated ". Compared with the biologist's insight the shep- 

 herd's outlook is superficial, but unless the biologist can 

 reconstruct and reanimate he has lost that view of things 

 in their totality which the shepherd has. We may have a 

 profound knowledge of the life-history of a creature and 

 yet fail to get that imaginative vision which the authors of 

 Animal Biographies have with less material made their own. 



In the attempt to conserve what is reached through feeling, 

 to which Man instinctively tries to hold firm, satisfaction 

 has been sought in Nature-poetry, in symbolism, in Natural 

 Theology, or in an idealisation of Nature in a religious halo. 

 These avenues of satisfaction, these pathways to reality, 

 for the two phrases mean much the same, remain happily 

 open to many. To others, however, they are closed, partly 

 because of the austerity of the scientific mood and partly 

 because there is a lack of correlation. Thus much Nature- 

 poetry is too like antiquarian or reminiscent architecture, 

 evading the problem of idealising the present in offering us 

 constructions whose beauty makes us forget for the time 

 that they are anachronisms. Similarly, the spiritualisations 



