The Crown of Wild Olive Part 41

KATHLEEN _and_ JESSIE. Oh! how?--how?

L. First, you must put yourselves together, as close as you can, in the middle of the gra.s.s, and form, for first practice any figure you like.

JESSIE. Any dancing figure, do you mean?

L. No; I mean a square, or a cross, or a diamond. Any figure you like, standing close together. You had better outline it first on the turf, with sticks, or pebbles, so as to see that it is rightly drawn; then get into it and enlarge or diminish it at one side, till you are all quite in it, and no empty s.p.a.ce left.

DORA. Crinoline and all?

L. The crinoline may stand eventually for rough crystalline surface, unless you pin it in; and then you may make a polished crystal of yourselves.

LILY. Oh, we'll pin it in--we'll pin it in!

L. Then, when you are all in the figure, let every one note her place, and who is next her on each side; and let the outsiders count how many places they stand from the corners.

KATHLEEN. Yes, yes,--and then?

L. Then you must scatter all over the playground--right over it from side to side, and end to end; and put yourselves all at equal distances from each other, everywhere. You needn't mind doing it very accurately, but so as to be nearly equidistant; not less than about three yards apart from each other, on every side.

JESSIE. We can easily cut pieces of string of equal length, to hold. And then?

L. Then, at a given signal, let everybody walk, at the same rate, towards the outlined figure in the middle. You had better sing as you walk; that will keep you in good time. And as you close in towards it, let each take her place, and the next comers fit themselves in beside the first ones, till you are all in the figure again.

KATHLEEN. Oh! how we shall run against each other! What fun it will be!

L. No, no, Miss Katie; I can't allow any running against each other. The atoms never do that, whatever human creatures do. You must all know your places, and find your way to them without jostling.

LILY. But how ever shall we do that?

ISABEL. Mustn't the ones in the middle be the nearest, and the outside ones farther off--when we go away to scatter, I mean?

L. Yes; you must be very careful to keep your order; you will soon find out how to do it; it is only like soldiers forming square, except that each must stand still in her place as she reaches it, and the others come round her; and you will have much more complicated figures, afterwards, to form, than squares.

ISABEL. I'll put a stone at my place: then I shall know it.

L. You might each nail a bit of paper to the turf, at your place, with your name upon it: but it would be of no use, for if you don't know your places, you will make a fine piece of business of it, while you are looking for your names. And, Isabel, if with a little head, and eyes, and a brain (all of them very good and serviceable of their kind, as such things go), you think you cannot know your place without a stone at it, after examining it well,--how do you think each atom knows its place, when it never was there before, and there's no stone at it?

ISABEL. But does every atom know its place?

L. How else could it get there?

MARY. Are they not attracted to their places?

L. Cover a piece of paper with spots, at equal intervals; and then imagine any kind of attraction you choose, or any law of attraction, to exist between the spots, and try how, on that permitted supposition, you can attract them into the figure of a Maltese cross, in the middle of the paper.

MARY (_having tried it_). Yes; I see that I cannot:--one would need all kinds of attractions, in different ways, at different places. But you do not mean that the atoms are alive?

L. What is it to be alive?

DORA. There now; you're going to be provoking, I know.

L. I do not see why it should be provoking to be asked what it is to be alive. Do you think you don't know whether you are alive or not?

(ISABEL _skips to the end of the room and back._)

L. Yes, Isabel, that's all very fine; and you and I may call that being alive: but a modern philosopher calls it being in a 'mode of motion.' It requires a certain quant.i.ty of heat to take you to the sideboard; and exactly the same quant.i.ty to bring you back again. That's all.

ISABEL. No, it isn't. And besides, I'm not hot.

L. I am, sometimes, at the way they talk. However, you know, Isabel, you might have been a particle of a mineral, and yet have been carried round the room, or anywhere else, by chemical forces, in the liveliest way.

ISABEL. Yes; but I wasn't carried: I carried myself.

L. The fact is, mousie, the difficulty is not so much to say what makes a thing alive, as what makes it a Self. As soon as you are shut off from the rest of the universe into a Self, you begin to be alive.

VIOLET (_indignant_). Oh, surely--surely that cannot be so. Is not all the life of the soul in communion, not separation?

L. There can be no communion where there is no distinction. But we shall be in an abyss of metaphysics presently, if we don't look out; and besides, we must not be too grand, to-day, for the younger children.

We'll be grand, some day, by ourselves, if we must. (_The younger children are not pleased, and prepare to remonstrate; but, knowing by experience, that all conversations in which the word 'communion' occurs, are unintelligible, think better of it._) Meantime, for broad answer about the atoms. I do not think we should use the word 'life,' of any energy which does not belong to a given form. A seed, or an egg, or a young animal are properly called 'alive' with respect to the force belonging to those forms, which consistently develops that form, and no other. But the force which crystallises a mineral appears to be chiefly external, and it does not produce an entirely determinate and individual form, limited in size, but only an aggregation, in which some limiting laws must be observed.

MARY. But I do not see much difference, that way, between a crystal and a tree.

L. Add, then, that the mode of the energy in a living thing implies a continual change in its elements; and a period for its end. So you may define life by its attached negative, death; and still more by its attached positive, birth. But I won't be plagued any more about this, just now; if you choose to think the crystals alive, do, and welcome.

Rocks have always been called 'living' in their native place.

MARY. There's one question more; then I've done.

L. Only one?

MARY. Only one.

L. But if it is answered, won't it turn into two?

MARY. No; I think it will remain single, and be comfortable.

L. Let me hear it.

MARY. You know, we are to crystallise ourselves out of the whole playground. Now, what playground have the minerals? Where are they scattered before they are crystallised; and where are the crystals generally made?

L. That sounds to me more like three questions than one, Mary. If it is only one, it is a wide one.

MARY. I did not say anything about the width of it.

L. Well, I must keep it within the best compa.s.s I can. When rocks either dry from a moist state, or cool from a heated state, they necessarily alter in bulk; and cracks, or open s.p.a.ces, form in them in all directions. These cracks must be filled up with solid matter, or the rock would eventually become a ruinous heap. So, sometimes by water, sometimes by vapour, sometimes n.o.body knows how, crystallisable matter is brought from somewhere, and fastens itself in these open s.p.a.ces, so as to bind the rock together again, with crystal cement. A vast quant.i.ty of hollows are formed in lavas by bubbles of gas, just as the holes are left in bread well baked. In process of time these cavities are generally filled with various crystals.

MARY. But where does the crystallising substance come from?

L. Sometimes out of the rock itself; sometimes from below or above, through the veins. The entire substance of the contracting rock may be filled with liquid, pressed into it so as to fill every pore;--or with mineral vapour;--or it may be so charged at one place, and empty at another. There's no end to the 'may be's.' But all that you need fancy, for our present purpose, is that hollows in the rocks, like the caves in Derbys.h.i.+re, are traversed by liquids or vapour containing certain elements in a more or less free or separate state, which crystallise on the cave walls.