LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 



and provides the dinner; and is rewarded by being told 

 that she is a base creature, devoted to low and material 

 interests. But in her garret she has fairy visions out of the 

 ken of the pair of shrews who are quarreling downstairs. 

 She sees the order which pervades the seeming disorder 

 of the world; the great drama of evolution, with its full 

 share of pity and terror, but also with abundant goodness 

 and beauty, unrolls itself before her eyes; and she learns 

 in her heart of hearts the lesson, that the foundation of 

 morality is to have done, once and for all, with lying; to 

 give up pretending to believe that for which there is no 

 evidence, and repeating unintelligible propositions about 

 things beyond the possibilities of knowledge. 



She knows that the safety of morality lies neither in the 

 adoption of this or that theological creed, but in a real 

 and living belief in that fixed order of nature which sends 

 social disorganization upon the track of immorality as 

 surely as it sends physical disease after physical tres- 

 passes. And of that firm and lively faith it is her high 

 mission to be the priestess. 



Although Tyndall and Huxley possessed fine liter- 

 ary equipments, making them masters of the art of 

 eloquent and effective statement, they were never- 

 theless on their guard against any anthropomorphic 

 tendencies. They were not unaware of the emotion 

 of the beautiful, the sublime, the mysterious, but as 

 men of science they could interpret evolution only 

 in terms of matter and energy. Most of their writ- 

 ings are good literature,, not because the authors 

 humanize the subject-matter and read themselves 

 into Nature's script, but because they are masters 

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