WHERE DO 'ALPINES' BEGIN? 49 



There, in less than a dozen words, was a handy and 

 easily-remembered formula, serving as a kind of 

 touchstone which, when applied to any doubtful 

 organism, would detect whether it w T ere plant or 

 animal. But other times, other methods : the 

 Linnaean formula is absolutely obsolete to-day.' 



And so must this broadening of our views con- 

 tinue as our powers of perception and appreciation 

 become greater. It is our ignorance which enables 

 us to draw dogmatic lines with so much complacency. 

 We are on little more than bowing terms with 

 evolution ; our practical conception of it is as yet 

 more casual than intimate. With evolution accepted 

 in its logical fulness as a thorough article of faith, 

 how, in strictness, draw the line anywhere in 

 circumstance which must be one unbroken chain ? 

 Science will some day oblige us to know that such 

 distinctions as 6 something ' and ' nothing,' * organic ' 

 arid ' inorganic,' are simply useful terms relative to 

 the exigencies of finite thought and speech. We 

 can, and we shall, always think more than we say, 

 but every day we say more and more what we 

 think. And in time we shall not only think, but 

 convincedly and intelligently speak, of creation as 

 an indivisible whole divisible only temporarily, 

 and for our own mortal convenience. 



7 



