1202 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



perhaps useful to distinguish a sixth contribution which sojourning 

 with living creatures has made to man's culture. It is a more universal 

 contribution, for all are not expert in handling big ideas, and com- 

 paratively few men, after all, have been makers of new knowledge 

 in a big way. We refer to the deep impressions which everyone should 

 gain from being at home in the world of life ; impressions, for instance, 

 of growing, multiplying, and developing, of changing, entailing, and 

 sifting. Even when these deep impressions remain undefined, they 

 are of fundamental value. They are indispensable parts of our 

 mental furnishing, and they cannot be replaced by anything else. 

 Other things equal, one would always trust the judgment of a 

 country-bred statesman more than that of one wholly urban, for the 

 man who is at home in the country has the deep impressions of 

 growing and developing which cannot be safely dispensed with by 

 those who would legislate for human life. Especially in a necessarily 

 mechanical age, it is ioHy to allow our children to grow up out of 

 touch with living Nature. This is not a question of educational 

 opinion; it is matter of life and death. It was said long ago that 

 "Man does not live by bread alone"; that was a warning against 

 biologisms, against forgetting the soul. But there is a complementary 

 warning: "Organisms cannot be nurtured on mechanisms only." 

 That is a warning against materialisms, against forgetting the life. 

 Dare we go a step further and say that just as nothing can take 

 the place of the star- strewn sky in impressing us with the fact that 

 we are citizens of no mean city, so from the envisaging of life we get 

 a feeling of the wonder of the world without which we are poor. 



What is this life if, full of care, 



We have no time to stand and stare ? 



We come, in conclusion, to the seventh contribution which 

 Natural History makes to culture. It strikes an ethical note. To 

 many thinkers of diverse schools it has seemed clear that man can 

 find in Animate Nature some guidance to help him in the conduct 

 of his own affairs. Some would call the realm of organisms a great 

 series of experiments with life, many of them extraordinarily in- 

 structive; and this matter-of-fact view is practically the same as 

 that which regards Nature as a book or revelation. Is anything 

 plainer in the drama of animal life than the condemnation of the 

 unlit lamp and the ungirt loin. 



For life is not as idle ore, 

 But iron dug from central gloom 

 And heated hot with burning fears, 

 And dipp't in baths of hissing tears, 

 And battered by the shocks of doom 

 To shape and use. 



