296 BIRDS AND MAN 



it. Heart and soul are with the brain in all investiga- 

 tion a truth which some know in rare, beautiful 

 intervals, and others never ; but we are all mean- 

 while busy with our work, like myriads of social 

 insects engaged in raising a structure that was never 

 planned. Perhaps we are not so wholly unconscious 

 of our destinies as were the patient gatherers of facts of 

 a hundred years ago. Even in one brief century the 

 dawn has come nearer perhaps a faint whiteness in 

 the east has exhilarated us like wine. Undoubtedly 

 we are more conscious of many things, both within 

 and without of the length and breadth and depth 

 of nature ; of a unity which was hardly dreamed 

 of by the naturalists of past ages, a commensalism 

 on earth from which the meanest organism is not 

 excluded. For we are no longer isolated, standing 

 like starry visitors on a mountain-top, surveying 

 life from the outside ; but are on a level with and 

 part and parcel of it ; and if the mystery of lif e daily 

 deepens, it is because we view it more closely and with 

 clearer vision. A poet of our age has said that in 

 the meanest floweret we may find " thoughts that 

 do often lie too deep for tears." The poet and 

 prophet is not alone in this ; he expresses a feeling 

 common to all of those who, with our wider know- 

 ledge, have the passion for nature in their hearts, who 



