30 INTRODUCTION TO SCIENCE 



SENSE OF THE INTER-RELATEDNESS OF THINGS. 

 A fourth characteristic of the scientific mood 

 is a sense of the inter-relatedness of things. It 

 regards Nature as a vibrating system most surely 

 and subtly interconnected. It discloses a world 

 of inter-relations, a long procession of causes, a 

 web of life, infinite sequences bound by the iron 

 chains of causality. 



In illustration, we would quote what we have 

 said elsewhere in reference to Darwin's picture 

 of "The Web of Life," one of the grandest of 

 all scientific pictures. "What is meant by Dar- 

 win's picture of the Web of Life, and where did 

 he paint it? We find it in all his works a lumin- 

 ous background the idea of linkages in nature, 

 the idea of the correlation of organisms. Cats 

 have to do with the clover-crop, Darwin says, 

 and earthworms with the world's bread supply. 

 If there is an orchid in Madagascar with a spur 

 eleven inches long, Darwin prophesies that there 

 is a moth with a proboscis of equal length. No 

 bird falls to the ground without sending a throb 

 through a wide circle, for Darwin rears eighty 

 seedlings from a single clod taken from a bird's 

 foot. Long nutritive chains may bind the bracken 

 on the hill-side to the brain of the proprietor 

 if he is fond of eating trout. The patent-leather 

 shoes on his feet connect him with the melan- 

 choly slaughter of seals, while his ivory-backed 



