UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 



of the art of expression, and give us a lively sense of 

 the workings of their own minds. 



Herbert Spencer, so far as I have read him, never 

 breathes the air of pure literature. "Life," says 

 Spencer, "is a continuous adjustment of internal 

 relations to external relations." In other words, 

 without air, water, and food our bodies would cease 

 to fxmction and life would end. Spencer's definition 

 is, of course, true so far as it goes, but it is of no more 

 interest than a,ny other statement of mere fact. It is 

 like opaque and inert matter. TyndaU's free charac- 

 terization of life as a "wave which in no two con- 

 secutive moments of existence is composed of the 

 same particles" pleases much more, because the 

 wave is a beautiful and suggestive object. The 

 mind is at once started upon the inquiry. What is it 

 that lifts the water up in the form of a wave and 

 travels on, while the water stays behind? It is a 

 force imparted by the wind, but where did the wind 

 get it, and what is the force? The impulse we call 

 life lifts the particles of the inorganic up into the 

 organic, into the myriad forms of life, — plant, tree, 

 bird, animal, — and, when it has rxm its course, 

 lets them drop back again into their original ele- 

 ments. 



Spencer was foreordained to the mechanistic view 



of life. His mind moves in the geometric plane. It 



is a military and engineering intellect applied to the 



problems of organic nature. How smoothly and 



188 



