230 PERSONALITY IN BIRDS 



to-day must express itself also to-day by what symbol 

 it can ; for it comes not again. So that, rightly 

 considered, there should be no antagonism between 

 science and art, between the thing as it is in Nature 

 and as it expresses itself symbolically through 

 the imagination. The antagonism exists only in the 

 minds of men of partial natures, and is the measure 

 of their limitation. The scientist may rightly demand 

 of the symbolist that his symbols shall violate no 

 known fact ; and the symbolist is under obligation to 

 his art to see to it that his symbols fitly convey 

 the subjective impression which is the raw material 

 upon which he works. If the first demands more, it 

 is as though he should forbid a man to call an object 

 green because he did not thereby express himself in 

 terms of the theory of light. This antagonism is, 

 nevertheless, as old as thinking and feeling, and is 

 protean in the diversity of its forms. It is the battle 

 of half-men, always extremists, each attacking in 

 some other lop-sided being his own deficient half 

 and complement. 



To pass from the Robin to the Redstart is to go 

 from the original to the copy ; for the Redstart is in 

 its character a lesser Robin. But it is the Robin of 

 the woods rather than of man's immediate environ- 

 ment, and as such it is a wilder bird. A Robin seeks 

 man out, watches him, and upon occasion rates him 

 roundly ; but the Redstart flees before him, and 

 there is added to its upbraiding notes a sob-like 

 sound that may be heard in Wheatear and Whinchat, 

 but not in the peremptory " Tet-tet ! " -vng of the 

 Robin. Its warbled song, too, is like that of the 

 Robin, but short, desultory, and of little penetrating 



