NATURAL SCIENCE: 



A Monthly Review of Scientific Progress. 



No. 36. Vol. VI. FEBRUARY. 1895. 



NOTES AND COMMENTS. 



Science and Letters. 



THE art of letters has no content of its own and stands in no 

 contrast to science. All of us, in attempting to describe a fossil 

 or to narrate the life-history of a fern, are engaged in the same pursuit 

 as is the man of letters. The distinction, between him and ourselves, 

 too often is this : we are incompetent craftsmen and we are persuaded 

 of the untruth that if you have something to say it does not matter 

 how you say it. Men of letters are not a class by themselves ; not 

 mere conjurors with words, amusing the rest of the world with the 

 grace and ingenuity of their antics, by their skilful poise of the 

 adjective and clever balancing of the phrase. They are historians, 

 dramatists, novelists, poets, or, sometimes, parsons and men of science 

 who have conquered not only ideas, but the expression of them. This 

 salutary truth, which should be a truism, may serve as an excuse for 

 reference in these pages to Robert Louis Stevenson, who, since last 

 we wrote, has become but a memory. 



In our poor opinion there is much of moment to scientific writers 

 in the art of Stevenson. First, there is the method. Steep yourself 

 in your subject, says the common adviser, then sit down and write 

 quickly. But so doing, your matter will ooze out from you in the 

 flamboyant periods of, say, the late Professor Kitchen Parker, or in 

 the more distasteful prolixity of the average German. Not so does 

 the expression of scientific fact take its appropriate place in the art 

 of letters. The most careful selection and arrangement of the facts 

 are needed, so that the salient points may be thrust into prominence, 

 the subsidiary facts restrained into a decent subordination, and vain 



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