WAYS OF NATURE 



one is just as shy of over-coloring or falsifying his 

 facts as the other, only he gives more than facts, 

 he gives impressions and analogies, and, as far as 

 possible, shows you the live bird on the bough. 



The literary and the scientific treatment of the 

 dog, for instance, will differ widely, not to say radi 

 cally, but they will not differ in one being true and 

 the other false. Each will be true in its own way. 

 One will be suggestive and the other exact; one 

 will be strictly objective, but literature is always 

 more or less subjective. Literature aims to invest its 

 subject with a human interest, and to this end stirs 

 our sympathies and emotions. Pure science aims 

 to convince the reason and the understanding alone. 

 Note Maeterlinck s treatment of the dog in a late 

 magazine article, probably the best thing on our 

 four-footed comrade that English literature has to 

 show. It gives one pleasure, not because it is all true 

 as science is true, but because it is so tender, human, 

 and sympathetic, without being false to the essen 

 tial dog nature; it does not make the dog do impos 

 sible things. It is not natural history, it is literature; 

 it is not a record of observations upon the manners 

 and habits of the dog, but reflections upon him and 

 his relations to man, and upon the many problems, 

 from the human point of view, that the dog must 

 master in a brief time: the distinctions he must 

 figure out, the mistakes he must avoid, the riddles of 

 life he must read in his dumb dog way. Of course, as 

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