184 INTRODUCTION TO SCIENCE 



dence of life over mechanism. We cannot give a 

 mechanical interpretation of an animate system 

 that in some mysterious way is more than the 

 sum of its parts, that has unified effective be- 

 haviour from the start, that has experience and 

 profits by it, that has a history behind it and 

 never ceases itself to trade with time. Thus the 

 Neo-Vitalists have made a home for the Dryad, 

 which some of them think they have even demon- 

 strated. With a suitable constituency of serious 

 students, the severer the biological discipline is 

 the more vital do things become. The old wood- 

 man who planted and tended his tree often had 

 an almost personal or parental interest in his 

 charge; the modern forester may lose this with 

 the change in the world's pace, but there comes 

 to him instead, in proportion as he knows his 

 business, a vision of the tree translucent, with its 

 intricate architecture and its intense life. "The 

 Dryad, living and breathing, moving and sensi- 

 tive, is again within the tree." 



Let us collect a few Natural History illustra- 

 tions. Many voyagers across the Atlantic have 

 watched the sun set in the water, lingering for a 

 minute or two like a ball of fire balanced on the 

 tight string of the horizon, and have waited after- 

 wards till it was quite dark except for the stars 

 and the "phosphoresence" a multitude of glow- 

 ing suns above and a greater multitude of gleam- 



