172 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and say that the tendency to connect the facts of history with the 

 overruling operations of law is fast breaking down the barriers which 

 separate our views of the government of the material world from those 

 we hold concerning the affairs of man ; so that it is safe to predict 

 that the time is not far distant when, in a philosophical point of view, 

 no very perceptible difference will be seen between the forces which 

 control the conduct and career of nations and those which preside over 

 the movements and revolutions of planets. 



In view of this overshadowing influence, it were useless to touch 

 upon the minor disturbances which science is producing upon history. 

 It may almost be described as the grand motive power, which, in our 

 day, is dragging the car of history along with it, as it drags all the 

 rest in the train of literature. Whether they are the luxurious palace- 

 cars, like poetry and history, furnished with all the elegance which 

 man's inventive genius has been accumulating for centuries, and which 

 only the richly-endowed may enter, or whether they are the plainer 

 passenger-cars, like fiction and eloquence, filled with a group of motley 

 characters, of greater or less pretensions and importance, and tricked 

 out in a variety of costumes they are all whirled along over the same 

 road, obedient to the impulse given them by the mighty machine which 

 stands, or rather flies, at the head of the train. 



The highest aim of science is to discover the truths of nature. 

 Literature, aspiring to something similar to this, recognizes the highest 

 merit of literary composition in what is called its "truth to nature." 

 In delineations of character, in descriptions of scenery, in the skillful 

 weaving together of the component parts of a play or a novel, in the 

 birth of sentiment, or in the happy turn given to an expression, what 

 we most admire is the writer's adherence to certain rules or standards 

 that have the closest conformity with what we observe in the internal 

 or external worlds. From what we perceive in ourselves or in things 

 around us, we derive the measure and gauge of all literary excellence. 

 True, our own perceptions are trained and quickened by the thoughts 

 and perceptions of others ; so that what we read or hear aids us in 

 correcting, enlarging, or refining our literary judgments. But we 

 must be able to combine empirical tests with subjective analysis, be- 

 fore the intellectual process can be completed which authorizes us to 

 determine whether any given production reaches that highest grade of 

 excellence implied in its being " true to nature." But what, it may 

 be asked, does this truth to nature actually consist in ? Is it necessary 

 that the author should set before us something that really exists ? some- 

 thing to be seen in nature, like a tree or a waterfall ? Do we require of 

 him an absolute verity ? So far from this, it is only necessary that he 

 should not shock us with anything that, at first sight, is repugnant to 

 our tastes or feelings anything that bears on its face the marks of 

 falsehood or extravagance. Within these limits, a " counterfeit pre- 

 sentment " is as good as the original. All that the most fastidious 



