170 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



novels are now but little read by reason of their coarseness, while such a 

 simple story as the " Vicar of Wakefield " is as popular as ever. While, 

 therefore, the general progress of events did much to humanize men, the 

 movement was very slow, with many and long periods of stagnation, 

 between about 400 B.C. and a.d. 1800. Persons of insight had learned 

 to be humane before science had taught them the wisdom of humane- 

 ness. Science had made considerable progress before the latter date. 

 But it was aristocratic. The common people concerned themselves little 

 about it because it taught them almost nothing which it was to their in- 

 terest to know. It dealt chiefly with large problems, not with the mi- 

 nute affairs of daily life. The fundamental difference between science 

 and poetry is that the former seeks to know and to set forth the truth 

 no matter what the consequences; the latter seeks to give pleasure. 

 Coleridge says: 



Poetry is not the proper antithesis to prose, but to science. Poetry is 

 opposed to science, prose to meter. The proper and immediate object of science 

 is the acquirement or communication of truth; the proper and immediate object 

 of poetry is the communication of pleasure. 



Hence the poetic justice that plays so important a part on the mod- 

 ern novel is not the justice that prevails among men. Science brings 

 before us the stern facts of the world in which we live, painful though 

 they may be. On the other hand, imaginative literature either ignores 

 those facts that pain the reader or weakens their effect by contrasting 

 them with man's nobler traits or with human nature in "her calmer 

 moods." Often a disagreeable subject is placed at a distance from us 

 in either time or space. The Homeric poems are full of strife and 

 slaughter and bloodshed and treachery; but they also portray conjugal 

 and parental affection, valor, friendships that are not broken by death, 

 piety toward the dead, fortitude and heroism. A novel in which all the 

 characters are bad would be read by nobody. The popularity of Scott 

 and Dickens is due mainly to the humanitarian spirit which their works 

 display. They portray villains of the blackest type, but they always meet 

 with the reward which we feel to be their due. Such novels are, there- 

 fore, not true to nature. Many knaves live to enjoy the fruits of their 

 villainy to the end of a long life and die in peace. To the scientist na- 

 ture is " red in tooth and claw " ; to the poet she is a benignant mother, 

 a provider of pleasure and a beneficent friend. A truth is often clad in 

 a poetic garb. It then becomes a winged word, and impresses itself 

 more firmly on the mind. It is poetry as well as truth. When Burns 

 wrote : " wad some power the giftie gie us," he put on a homely truth 

 a poetic garment. On the other hand, the commonplace and unadorned 

 dictum : " Honesty is the best policy," together with a thousand similar 

 proverbs lacks every element of poetry. It is the embodiment of human 

 experience, a sort of summing up of what men have learned in their 



