UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 



"Science and Immortality." It is very pronounced 

 in Alfred Russel Wallace; in fact, in his later work 

 his anthropomorphism is rampant. H * has cut more 

 fantastic tricks before the high heavei* of science 

 than any other man of our time of equal scientific 

 attainments. What a contrast to the sane, patient, 

 and truth-loving mind of Darwin! Yet Darwin, it 

 seems to me, humanized his birds when he endowed 

 the females with human femininity, attributing to 

 them love of ornament and of fine plumage, and 

 making this love of ornamentation the basis of his 

 theory of sexual selection. It seems as though in 

 that case he could not find the key to his problem, 

 and so proceeded to make one a trick to which 

 we are all prone. 



Since science dehumanizes nature, its progress as 

 science is in proportion as it triumphs over the an- 

 thropomorphic character which our hopes, our fears, 

 our partialities, in short, our innate humanism, has 

 bestowed upon the outward world. Literature, on 

 the other hand, reverses this process, and humanizes 

 everything it looks upon; its products are the fruit 

 of the human personality playing upon the things of 

 life and nature, making everything redolent of hu- 

 man qualities, and speaking to the heart and to the 

 imagination. Science divests nature of all human 

 attributes and speaks to impersonal reason alone. 

 For science to be anthropomorphic is to cease to be 

 science; and for literature to be anything else is to 

 190 



