

Night-Prowls in the Streets 103 



architecture no less than in our way of 

 viewing the world and the men in it. 

 These are attributes of every good picture 

 painted, seen, or fancied. We find better 

 compositions in gaslight and moonlight 

 than in daytime, because detail is lost and 

 mass is compassed. So in our thinking 

 we cannot afford to put all facts into an 

 equal light, because not every fact is a 

 commanding fact. The sun of truth, too, 

 is so strong that we have to turn partly 

 from it when we see the world in its illumi- 

 nation. Our eyes are not yet the eyes of 

 eagles. We have not risen far beyond our 

 worldly pedestals. Yet to many, material 

 things are least Nature is not the same 

 in the eye of the scientist that it is in the 

 eye of the nature lover. To the one it is 

 as a man on the dissecting-table ; to the 

 other as the man erect and speaking. 

 Have we not been dissecting long enough? 

 We have never learned to put the cut 

 limbs back again and make a man. We 

 are interested in nature, less as a problem 

 or result in chemistry than as it reflects 

 ourselves, though he is a finer man who 



