SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 



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this is found in the very simple justification offered by the claims of art. 

 Dr. Groos's Play of Animals, shortly to be published in English, is a very 

 valuable example of the scientific attitude. That Mr. Kipling's literary 

 treatment has been untrammeled is a cause for congratulations, unless we 

 are to beg the question at the outset by relegating imagination to fairy tales 

 pure and simple. Now, Mr. Kipling does not deal in fairy tales, but pri- 

 marily with motives which are practical. When Shelley enshrined the 

 skylark in literature he did not clip the wings of his song with an explana- 

 tion that the skylark sometimes destroys crops in Germany. This fact 

 would have been noted by Mr. Kipling, and in one way or another his im- 

 agination would have found a way of suggesting it in a purely literary 

 form. This is an extreme case, but it illustrates fairly enough a mental 

 curiosity, alertness, and keenness of perception which would have made a 

 mark in laboratory work, let us say, if Mr. Kipling had been a student of 

 science. The suggestion gains piquancy from the constant presence in Mr. 

 Kipling's work of a quality diametrically opposed to this the martial spirit, 

 which is quite the reverse of the scientific. Mr. Kipling's earlier years of 

 association with the British army in India have left an impress which will 

 remain. In spite of the nobler motive of the magnificent Recessional, the 

 ring of the sword is heard throughout the larger portion of his verse and 

 prose, a note due to his intense vitality and personal force, as well as to the 

 accentuated patriotism of the poet laureate of Greater Britain. 



Patriotism, however, which we are assured is unscientific and merely a 

 phase of selfishness, has nothing to do necessarily with another phase of 

 Mr. Kipling's literary performance his literary conquest of the new realm 

 of applied science. From him we have learned that the locomotive en- 

 gineer may be a more romantic figure than the mailed knight, and that the 

 passing away of white sails has lessened in no degree the poetry of the sea. 

 The central motive of our time is the application of science to industry, but 

 it was left for Kipling to sing the song of steam in Mc Andrew's Hymn. 

 One grows chary of the use of that time-honored phrase "a new note." 

 There have been so many " new notes " which have died away into a silence 

 never broken afterward. But if Mr. Kipling should write no more, he has 

 already proclaimed the romance of machinery, the heroism of ''earth's 

 chosen men of strength," the significance of the deep-sea cables, " blind, 

 white sea snakes," and he has expressed the appeal to the poet's imagina- 

 tion made by phases of invention, commerce, and manufacture, which 

 have had hardly a superficial recognition heretofore. There are critics who 

 quarrel with Mr. Kipling's liberal use of the nomenclature of marine en- 

 gines and locomotives, but that is not a quarrel to be insisted upon. Pos- 

 sibly, like a student in the first flush of enthusiasm, he is unconsciously 

 zealous to show that he does not "miscall technicalities," but "coupler 

 flanges" and "spindle guides" by the score will not prevent such work 

 from reducing the number of "damned ijjits" who whimper that " steam 

 spoils romance at sea." Quite aside from purely literary quality, with 

 which we are not primarily concerned in this place, Mr. Kipling's power 

 of concentration, his application as a student, and his ability to master 

 practical details are exhibited to a very striking degree in McAndrew's 

 Hymn, in The Ship that Found Herself, in his long story Captains Cour- 

 ageous, and in his story No. 007, which appeared lately in Scribner's Maga- 

 zine. We do not think that a story like the last furnishes the human interest 



