THE SUMMIT OF THE YEARS 



cerate it, we vivisect it, we press it on all sides and 

 in all ways, to find out something about its habits 

 or its mental processes that is usually not worth 

 knowing. 



Well, we can gain a lot of facts, such as they are, 

 but we may lose our own souls. This spirit has in- 

 vaded school and college. Our young people go to 

 the woods with pencil and note-book in hand; they 

 drive sharp bargains with every flower and bird and 

 tree they meet; they want tangible assets that can 

 be put down in black and white. Nature as a living 

 joy, something to love, to live with, to brood over, 

 is now, I fear, seldom thought of. It is only a mine 

 to be worked and to be through with, a stream to be 

 fished, a tree to be shaken, a field to be gleaned. 

 With what desperate thoroughness the new men 

 study the birds; and about all their studies yield is 

 a mass of dry, unrelated facts. 



In school and college our methods are more and 

 more thorough and businesslike, more and more 

 searching and systematic : we would go to the roots 

 of the tree of knowledge, even if we find a dead tree 

 on our hands. We fairly vivisect Shakespeare and 

 Milton and Virgil. We study a dead language as if 

 it were a fossil to be classified, and forget that the 

 language has a live literature, which is the main con- 

 cern. We study botany so hard that we miss the 

 charm of the flower entirely; we pursue the bird 

 with such a spirit of gain and exactitude that a 

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