A SHARP LOOKOUT 



translated them. Then the ideal steals in 

 and lends a charm in spite of one. It is 

 not so much what we see as what the thing 

 seen suggests. We all see about the same ; 

 to one it means much, to another little. A 

 fact that has passed through the mind of 

 man, like lime or iron that has passed 

 through his blood, has some quality or prop- 

 erty superadded or brought out that it did 

 not possess before. You may go to the 

 fields and the woods, and gather fruit that 

 is ripe for the palate without any aid of 

 yours, but you cannot do this in science or 

 in art. Here truth must be disentangled 

 and interpreted, — must be made in the im- 

 age of man. Hence all good observation is 

 more or less a refining and transmuting pro- 

 cess, and the secret is to know the crude 

 material when you see it. I think of Words- 

 worth's lines : — 



" The mighty world 

 Of eye and ear, both what they half create and what perceive ; " 



which is as true in the case of the naturalist 

 as of the poet; both "half create" the 

 world they describe. Darwin does some- 

 thing to his facts as well as Tennyson to 

 his. Before a fact can become poetry, it 

 must pass through the heart or the imagi- 



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