98 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



NATURAL SCIENCE IN A LITERARY EDUCATION. 



By ALBEKT H. TOLMAN, 



ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO. 



THE greatest forms of literature hold the mirror up to Nature 

 that is, to life. Literary conventions, even, go back at some 

 point to real life. Because actual Sicilian shepherds once piped 

 their happy songs where Theocritus heard them, the world has 

 had its long line of pastoral poetry, an intolerable deal of the 

 sack of empty repetition and formalism to one half pennyworth 

 of the bread of reality. In spite of traditions, however, the more 

 important literature of the world has kept in touch with actual 

 life. Of Shakespeare and Chaucer we can confidently say that, 

 though each had a library at home, he found another and a better 

 one upon the street. 



Modern science has invaded modern life ; its devices meet us 

 at every turn, its great conceptions fill our minds. What shall 

 be the attitude toward science of those students who wish a 

 literary education ? Shall they devote themselves entirely to the 

 study of the classic productions in the languages of ancient and 

 modern nations ? or shall they take up also those advancing lines 

 of scientific investigation and speculation which are producing 

 new instruments for everyday life and new themes for thought, and 

 which are fashioning anew the very minds and language of men ? 



The clearness with which Wordsworth foresaw, in 1800, that 

 poetry itself would in the time to come draw its subject-matter 

 more and more from the domain of science, seems truly marvel- 

 ous. He said in that year, in the preface which he wrote for the 

 second edition of the Lyrical Ballads : 



* If the labors of men of science should ever create any mate- 

 rial revolution ... in our condition and in the impressions which 

 we habitually receive, the poet will sleep then no more than at 

 present; he will be ready to follow the steps of the man of sci- 

 ence. . . . The remotest discoveries of the chemist, the botanist, 

 or mineralogist will be as proper objects of the poet's art as any 

 upon which it can be employed, if the time should ever come 

 when these things shall be familiar to us, and the relations under 

 which they are contemplated by the followers of these respective 

 sciences shall be manifestly and palpably material to us as enjoy- 

 ing and suffering beings. If the time should ever come when 

 what is now called science, thus familiarized to men, shall be 

 ready to put on, as it were, a form of flesh and blood, the poet 

 will lend his divine spirit to aid the transfiguration, and will 

 welcome the being thus produced as a dear and genuine inmate 

 of the household of man." 



