UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 
from the lecture-hall where the “learned astrono- 
mer” was discoursing about the stars, and in silence 
gazed up at the sky gemmed with them, he showed 
clearly to which type he belonged. Tyndall said 
that men of warm feelings, with minds open to the 
elevating impressions produced by nature as a 
whole, whose satisfaction therefore is rather ethical 
than logical, lean to the synthetic side, while the 
analytic harmonizes best with the more precise and 
more mechanical bias which seeks the satisfaction 
of the understanding. Tyndall said of Goethe that 
while his discipline as a poet went well with his nat- 
ural history studies, it hindered his approach to the 
physical and mechanical sciences. Tyndall, him- 
self, was a notable blending of the two types of 
mind; to his proficiency in analytical and experimen- 
tal science he joined literary gifts of a high order. 
It is these gifts that make his work rank high in the 
literature of science. 
Tyndall was wont to explain his mechanistic 
views of creation to Carlyle, whom he greatly re- 
vered. But Carlyle did not take kindly to them. 
This was one of the phases of physical science which 
repelled him. Carlyle revolted at the idea that the 
sun was the physical basis of life. He could not en- 
dure any teaching that savored of materialism. He 
would not think of the universe as a machine, but as 
an organism. Yggdrasill, the Tree of Life, was his 
favorite image. Considering how the concrete forces 
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