UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 



account for the thing as it stands to us. Life is a 

 flower, and the analysis of it does not tell us why we 

 are so moved by it. The moral, the aesthetic, the 

 spiritual values which we find in life and in nature 

 are utterly beyond the range of physical science, and 

 I suppose it is because the physicochemical expla- 

 nation of the phenomenon of life takes no account, 

 and can take no account, of these, that it leaves us 

 cold and uninterested. Spencer with his irrefragable 

 mechanistic theories leaves us indifferent, while 

 Bergson, with his "Creative Evolution," sets mind 

 and spirit all aglow. One interprets organic nature 

 in terms of matter and motion, the other interprets 

 it in terms of life and spirit. 



Science is the critic and doctor of life, but never 

 its inspirer. It enlarges the field of literature, but its 

 aims are unliterary. The scientific explanation of 

 the great problems — life, mind, consciousness — 

 seems strangely inadequate; they are like the scien- 

 tific definition of light as vibrations or electric oscil- 

 lations in the ether of space, which would not give a 

 blind man much idea of light. The scientific method 

 is supreme in its own sphere, but that sphere is not 

 commensurate with the whole of human life. Life 

 flowers in the subjective world of our sentiments, 

 emotions, and aspirations, and to this world liter- 

 ature, art, and religion alone have the key. 



