UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 



the creative artist puts himself, as the bee puts 

 herself into the nectar she gathers from the flowers 

 to make it into honey. Honey is the nectar plus the 

 bee; and a poem, or other work of art, is fact and 

 observation plus the man. In so far as scientific 

 knowledge checks our tendency to humanize nature, 

 and to infuse ourselves into it, and give to it the 

 hues of our own spirits, it is the enemy of literature 

 and art. In so far as it gives us a wider and truer 

 conception of the material universe, which it cer- 

 tainly has done in every great science, it ought to be 

 their friend and benefactor. Our best growth is at- 

 tained when we match knowledge with love, insight 

 with reverence, understanding with sympathy and 

 enjoyment; else the machine becomes more and 

 more, and the man less and less. 



Fear, superstition, misconception, have played 

 a great part in the literature and religion of the 

 past; they have given it reality, picturesqueness, 

 and power; it remains to be seen if love, knowledge, 

 democracy, and human brotherhood can do as well. 



Ill 



The literary treatment of scientific matter is nat- 

 urally of much more interest to the general reader 

 than to the man of science. By literary treatment I 

 do not mean taking liberties with facts, but treating 

 them so as to give the reader a lively and imagina- 

 tive realization of them — a sense of their aesthetic 



184 



