186 INTRODUCTION TO SCIENCE 



that have died far below. Everything is unpropi- 

 tious, yet life is abundant; we feel what Berg- 

 son calls the elan, the spring, the impetus that 

 is characteristic of livingness. We feel the in- 

 surgent, indomitable, self-assertive character of lie- 

 ing organisms, something foreign to the purely 

 physical. 



On the links, perhaps nearer home for most of 

 us, the whole surface of the grass is sometimes 

 covered for acres with threads of gossamer. If 

 we bend down we see the earth quivering as far 

 as the eye can reach. In some of the hollows 

 still unsunned, we see what R. L. Stevenson meant 

 by "the fairy wheels and threads of cobwebs 

 dew-bediamonded." When the sun catches the 

 quivering threads, the silvery robe changes to 

 one of gold. Who can see this without thinking 

 of Goethe's words about Nature: "She moves 

 and works above and beneath, working and weav- 

 ing, an endless motion, birth and death, an infi- 

 nite ocean, a changeful web, a glowing life." The 

 beauty of it is increased, not decreased, if we 

 happen to know a little about the natural history 

 of gossamer, for most of these threads are the 

 residues of the ballooning activity of thousands 

 of small spiders. The sight as we see it is a good 

 emblem of the intricacy of the web of life. 



Three examples are as good as three hundred, 

 for what we mean is simple enough. Whether 



