LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 



and intellectual values. The creative mind can 

 quicken a dead fact and make it mean something in 

 the emotional sphere. 



When we humanize things, we are beyond the 

 sphere of science and in the sj)here of literature. We 

 may still be dealing with truths, but not with facts. 

 Tyndall, in his "Fragments," very often rises from 

 the sphere of science into that of literature. He does 

 so, for instance, in considering the question of per- 

 sonal identity in relation to that of molecular change 

 in the body. He asks : — 



How is the sense of personal identity maintained across 

 this flight of the molecules that goes on incessantly in our 

 bodies, so that while our physical being, after a certain 

 number of years, is entirely renewed, our consciousness 

 exhibits no solution of continuity? Like clianging sen- 

 tinels, the oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon that depart 

 seem to whisper their secret to their comrades that arrive, 

 and thus, while the Non-ego shifts, the Ego remains the 

 same. Constancy of form in the groujiing of tlie mole- 

 cules, and not constancy of the molecules tliemsclves, is 

 the correlative of this constancy of perception. Life is a 

 wave which in no two consecutive moments of existence 

 is composed of the same particles. 



Tyndall has here stated a scientific fact in the 

 picturesque and poetic manner of literature. Henri 

 Bergson docs this on nearly every page. When his 

 subject-matter is scientific, his treatment of it is 

 literary. Indeed, the secret of the charm and power 

 of his "Creative Evolution" is the rare fusion and 



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