56 INDOOE STUDIES 



— does, indeed, disclose and establish a kind of rudi- 

 mentary soul or intelligence in the tip of the radicle 

 of plants. No poet has ever made the trees so hu- 

 man. Mark, for instance, his discovery of the value 

 of cross-fertilization in the vegetable kingdom, and 

 the means Nature takes to bring it about. Cross- 

 fertilization is just as important in the intellec- 

 tual kingdom as in the vegetable. The thoughts of 

 the recluse finally become pale and feeble. With- 

 out pollen from other minds, how can one have a 

 race of vigorous seedlings of his own? Thus all 

 Darwinian books have to me a literary or poetic 

 substratum. The old fable of metamorphosis and 

 transformation he illustrates afresh in his "Origin 

 of Species," in the "Descent of Man." Darwin's 

 interest in nature is strongly scientific, but our in- 

 terest in him is largely literary; he is tracking a 

 principle, the principle of organic life, following it 

 through all its windings and turnings and doub- 

 lings and redoublings upon itself, in the air, in the 

 earth, in the water, in the vegetable, and in all 

 the branches of the animal world; the footsteps of 

 creative energy; not why, but how; and we foUow 

 him as we would follow a great explorer, or general, 

 or voyager like Columbus, charmed by his candor, 

 dilated by his mastery. He is said to have lost his 

 taste for poetry, and to have cared little for what is 

 called religion. His sympathies were so large and 

 comprehensive; the mere science in him is so per- 

 petually overarched by that which is not science, but 

 faith, insight, imagination, prophecy, inspiration, — 



