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Show 67 "I then began to creep down the smooth incline, depending mostly upon my hands, wetting them with my tongue, and striking them flatly upon the rock to make them stick by atmospheric pressure." He was learning about glaciers by imitating them, and his study became increasingly a physical activity. As he climbed through the steep and seemingly inaccessible canyons, he began to call upon not simply his imagination but his physical discipline. As he journeyed back and forth through natural history, following the glacial footprints, he was directed through time and space, here and now, but toward eternity. BODY AND SOUL Muir was deeply troubled by the doubleness of his life in the mountains, and it is instructive to explore his dilemma. On the one hand he had learned to value his physical sensations, especially after he had nearly been blinded. On the other hand, he often wondered whether he wouldn't have preferred to be all mind, all spirit, and consequently bodiless. He found the method of scientific study introduced by Agassiz congenial because it was based on close inspection of the objects in Nature. But Muir felt, along with Agassiz, that a scientist's duty went beyond "angular factiness." "Philosophers have yet to learn that a physical fact is as sacred as a moral principle. Our own nature demands from us this double allegiance," Agassiz had said. Muir believed this maxim, and believed further that his senses and soul were sacred but independent when his body and |