X PREFACE 



found them in my own work, to stir up considerable discussion and 

 to provide opportunities for reading modern scientific literature. 

 Moreover, the literary style of science at its best will be found to be 

 excellently illustrated in these straightforward, coherent sentences 

 written by some of the world's clearest thinkers. They illustrate 

 concretely what Tyndall remarked in his closing words of the famous 

 Belfast Address: *'It has been said that science divorces itself from 

 literature. The statement, like so many others, arises from lack of 

 knowledge. A glance at the less technical writings of its leaders — 

 of its Helmholtz, its Huxley, and its Du Bois-Reymond — would show 

 what breadth of literary culture they command. Where among mod- 

 em writers can you find their superiors in clearness and vigor of 

 literary style? Science desires no isolation, but freely combines with 

 every effort toward the bettering of man's estate. Single-handed 

 and supported not with outward sympathy, but by inward force, it 

 has built at least one great wing of the many-mansioned home which 

 man in his totality demands. . . . The world embraces not only a 

 Newton, but a Shakespeare ; not only a Boyle, but a Raphael ; not 

 only a Kant, but a Beethoven ; not only a Darwin, but a Carlyle. Not 

 in each of these, but in all, is human nature whole. They are not 

 opposed, but supplementary ; not mutually exclusive, but reconcilable." 



William S. Knickerbocker 



UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH 

 SEWANEE, TENN. 



April 5, IQ27 



