Poetic Interpretation 159 



that the sun sets, but we know that it does not. 

 To say that a potato-plant works all the season 

 in order to provide for its offspring the next year 

 is said to give a wrong conception of the plant 

 because it implies motive. But does this pic- 

 ture mislead any one? Everybody knows that 

 a potato-plant has no brains. Everybody knows 

 that the statement conveys a truth. If the 

 phrase is not justifiable, then it is a question 

 whether I may say that a potato has eyes. 

 Much of the objection to statements of this kind 

 is mere quibbling (pp. 60, 120). 



But, on the other hand, all such allegories 

 must be true in spirit and in their teaching 

 value. Much of the current writing of plants 

 and animals by which human motives are 

 implied, is productive of harm; but we should 

 distinguish between metaphor, or mere literary 

 license, and an untrue point of view. The ulti- 

 mate test is whether the reader is led to believe 

 what is not true. An animal or a plant may be 

 represented as telling its own story without mis- 

 leading any one, even as a character in a novel 

 may speak in the first person ; we need not imply 



