AS THE BIOLOGIST SEES IT 



mud. John Muir's dog, Stickeen, seems 

 to have had no less faith in his master 

 at whose insistence he leaped the danger- 

 ous glacier crevasse that seemed too wide. 

 Had Stickeen a soul? The young robins 

 that make their first flutterings from the 

 nest perhaps have faith in the parent 

 birds' assurances. Are they soulful? 



But other people mean other things 

 by soul : they mean the creative imagina- 

 tion, the capacity for a self-expression of 

 the wonderful things in them. Man's 

 mind is so wonderful, as evidenced by 

 his discoveries, his inventions, his poetry 

 and music and painting, that you say 

 there simply must be more than brain- 

 cells and nerve fibrils as basis for them; 

 there must be soul in him. But a simple 

 physical injury or disharmony in these 

 material body tissues means a prompt 

 end to all these wonders. A boy com- 

 panion of mine was called, because of 

 what he could do in music, a genius. 

 He fell one day from a gate post and 

 struck his head against a stone. In 



