of life as the flower turns to the sun. The eyes are lifted to the
Creator's with a wistful yearning. It is the look we sometimes see in
the eyes of a woodland creature appealing for mercy. It is such a look
as might belong to that imaginary being of the Greek mythology, the
faun, half beast, half human. Thus Adam, still but half created,
begins to feel the thrill of life in his members, and is aroused to
action. He lifts his hand to meet the Creator's outstretched finger.
The current of life is established, the vital spark is communicated,
and in another moment Adam will rise in his full dignity as a human
soul.

This picture was painted long before there was any knowledge of
electricity, of electric sparks, and electric currents. Yet, if we did
not know otherwise, we might fancy that Michelangelo had some of
these wonderful ideas of modern science in mind, as the symbols of the
great thoughts he was trying to express.

The picture suggests to our latter day scientific imagination that
God's currents of power move as silently, as swiftly, as invisibly and
mysteriously as the currents of electricity. The painter meant to show
that the work of creation was not a mechanical effort of the Almighty,
but that with him a gesture, a word, even a thought, brings something
into being.

The series of which this picture forms a part is painted in fresco on
the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, in the Pope's palace of the
Vatican, Rome. To break up the monotony of the long plain surface he
had to decorate, the painter divided the strip of space in the centre
into nine compartments. These are separated from each other by a
painted architectural framework, so cunningly represented that it