240 LIFE AND DEATH. 



It was the same with the poets. Their tendency 

 has always been to attribute life to Nature, so as to 

 bring her into harmony with our thoughts and feel- 

 ings. They seek to discover the life or soul hidden 

 in the background of things. 



" Hark to the voices. Nothing is silent. 



Winds, waves, and flames, trees, reeds, and rocks 

 All live; all are instinct with soul." 



After making proper allowance for emotional 

 exaggeration, ought we to consider these ideas as the 

 prophetic divination of a truth which science is only 

 just beginning to dimly perceive? By no means. As 

 Renan has said, this universal animism, instead of 

 being a product of refined reflection, is merely a 

 legacy from the most primitive of mental processes, 

 a residue of conceptions belonging to the childhood 

 of humanity. It recalls the time when men conceived 

 of external things only in terms of themselves; when 

 they pictured each object of nature as a living being. 

 Thus, they personified the sky, the earth, the sea, the 

 mountains, the rivers, the fountains, and the fields. 

 They likened to animate voices the murmur of the 

 forest : 



". . . The oak chides and the birch 

 Is whispering. . . . 

 And the beech murmurs. . . . 



The willow's shiver, soft and faint, sounds like a word. 

 The pine-tree utters mysterious moans." 



For primitive man, as for the poet of all times, 

 everything is alive, and every sound is due to a being 

 with feelings similar to our own. The sighing of the 

 breeze, the moan of the wave upon the shore, the 



