e delicacy, we should never be
able to take one up between the forefinger and thumb and feel it.
These ultimate particles are invisible and intangible. Nothing could
be less substantial. And we find further that, inconceivably minute
as they are, they _act of themselves_ under the mutual influence of
one another. The electrons are not like shot which have been heaped
together by some outside agency, and which roll about the floor if
someone outside gives them a push, but which will otherwise remain
immobile. They congregate together of their own inner prompting.
They are like a swarm of midges or bees in which each individual
acts on its own impulsion, and, in the case of bees, all together form
themselves into a definite organisation with a collective spirit of its
own. The Earth is indeed influenced by its parent the Sun, and acts
in accordance with the same laws and is swayed by the same
impulses as govern the whole Universe, of which it is a minute
though highly important mite. But the point is that the Earth is not
something like a lump of clay which a potter takes in his hands and
moulds into a ball. The Earth moulds itself from activities that it
contains within itself.

Running through the whole mighty swarm of electrons we call the
Earth is a tendency to order, organisation, and system. The myriad
millions of ultimate particles in their all-togetherness and from their
interaction upon one another become possessed of an imperative
urge towards excellence. The electrons group themselves into atoms;
the atoms clump themselves together into molecules; the molecules
combine into chemical compounds, and these into organisms of
ever-increasing size and complexity. So in the process of the ages
there came into being, from out of the very Earth itself, first, lowly
forms of plants and animals, then higher and higher forms exhibiting
higher and higher qualities, till the flowers of the field, the animals,
and man himself came into existence.

And now we reach the point I wish to make. If this account of the
Earth which physicists and biologists give us be true, then we
geographers should take a less material and a more spiritual view of
the Earth than we have done, and should, like primitive people all
the world over, regard her as Mother-Earth, and recognise our
intimate connection with her. Primitive peoples everywhere regard
the Earth as alive and as their Mother. And so intensely do they feel
this liveness that ma