UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 



from the lecture-hall where the "learned astrono- 

 mer" was discoursing about the stars, and in silence 

 gazed up at the sky gemmed with them, he showed 

 clearly to which type he belonged. Tyndall said 

 that men of warm feelings, with minds open to the 

 elevating impressions produced by nature as a 

 whole, whose satisfaction therefore is rather ethical 

 than logical, lean to the synthetic side, while the 

 analytic harmonizes best with the more precise and 

 more mechanical bias which seeks the satisfaction 

 of the understanding. Tyndall said of Goethe that 

 while his discipline as a poet went well with his nat- 

 ural history studies, it hindered his approach to the 

 physical and mechanical sciences. Tyndall, him- 

 self, was a notable blending of the two types of 

 mind; to his proficiency in analytical and experimen- 

 tal science he joined literary gifts of a high order. 

 It is these gifts that make his work rank high in the 

 literature of science. 



Tyndall was wont to explain his mechanistic 

 views of creation to Carlyle, whom he greatly re- 

 vered. But Carlyle did not take kindly to them. 

 This was one of the phases of physical science which 

 repelled him. Carlyle revolted at the idea that the 

 sun was the physical basis of life. He could not en- 

 dure any teaching that savored of materialism. He 

 would not think of the universe as a machine, but as 

 an organism. Yggdrasill, the Tree of Life, was his 

 favorite image. Considering how the concrete forces 



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