BREATH OF LIFE
BY JOHN BURROUGHS



THE

BREATH OF LIFE


BY

JOHN BURROUGHS

[Illustration]

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge


_Published May 1915_




PREFACE


As life nears its end with me, I find myself meditating more and more
upon the mystery of its nature and origin, yet without the least hope
that I can find out the ways of the Eternal in this or in any other
world. In these studies I fancy I am about as far from mastering the
mystery as the ant which I saw this morning industriously exploring a
small section of the garden walk is from getting a clear idea of the
geography of the North American Continent. But the ant was occupied and
was apparently happy, and she must have learned something about a small
fraction of that part of the earth's surface.

I have passed many pleasant summer days in my hay-barn study, or under
the apple trees, exploring these questions, and though I have not solved
them, I am satisfied with the clearer view I have given myself of the
mystery that envelops them. I have set down in these pages all the
thoughts that have come to me on this subject. I have not aimed so much
at consistency as at clearness and definiteness of statement, letting my
mind drift as upon a shoreless sea. Indeed, what are such questions, and
all other ultimate questions, but shoreless seas whereon the chief
reward of the navigator is the joy of the adventure?

Sir Thomas Browne said, over two hundred years ago, that in philosophy
truth seemed double-faced, by which I fancy he meant that there was
always more than one point of view of all great problems, often
contradictory points of view, from which truth is revealed. In the
following pages I am aware that two ideas, or principles, struggle in my
mind for mastery. One is the idea of the super-mechanical and the
super-chemical character of living things; the other is the idea of the
supremacy and universality of