his idea be said to exist
independent of the type? Only in the mind that reads the page, and then
not permanently. Then it is only an arrangement of molecules of matter
in the brain, which is certainly only temporary. On the printed page it
is a certain combination of white and black that moves the cells of the
brain through the eye to create the idea. So the conception in our minds
of our neighbor or friend--his character, his personality--exists after
he is dead, but when our own brain ceases to function, where is it then?

We rather resent being summed up in this way in terms of physics, or
even of psychology. Can you reconstruct the flower or the fruit from its
ashes? Physics and biochemistry and psychology describe all men in the
same terms; our component parts are all the same; but character,
personality, mentality--do not these escape your analysis? and are they
not also real?

III. THE INTERPRETER OF NATURE

Emerson quotes Bacon as saying that man is the minister and interpreter
of Nature. But man has been very slow to see that he is a part of that
same Nature of which he is the minister and interpreter. His
interpretation is not complete until he has learned to interpret himself
also. This he has done all unconsciously through his art, his
literature, his religion, his philosophy. Painting interprets one phase
of him, music another, poetry another, sculpture another, his civic
orders another, his creeds and beliefs and superstitions another, so
that at this day and age of the world he has been pretty well
interpreted. But the final interpretation is as far off as ever, because
the condition of man is not static, but dynamic. He is forever born anew
into the world and experiences new wonder, new joy, new loves, new
enthusiasms. Nature is infinite, and the soul of man is infinite, and
the action and reaction between the two which gives us our culture and
our civilization can never cease. When man thinks he is interpreting
Nature, he is really interpreting himself--reading his own heart and
mind through the forms and movements that surround him. In his art and
his literature he bodies forth his own ideals; in his religion he gives
the measure of his awe and reverence and his aspirations toward the
perfect good; in his science he illustrates his capacity for logical
order and for weighing evidence. There is no astronomy to the night
prowler, there is no geology to the woodchuck or the ground mole, there
is no