376 
book on the subject as that of Dr. Santayana 
ought to receive special mention in the pages 
of Science. For the scientific man must ever 
have before him as a warning, the sad loss of the 
zesthetic and literary sensibilities which befell 
Darwin—a loss which, however much one may 
be given up to an absorbing pursuit, it is easily 
possible to prevent if one will but give oneself 
now andthen a full and unrestrained bath, of 
short duration it may be, in some form of es- 
thetic enjoyment or of esthetic speculation. If 
the college professor can spend his summers in 
painting pictures, as more than one college pro- 
fessor in this country is known todo, he will be 
reasonably sure to keep himself a happy human 
being and at the same time to detract nothing 
from his sum-total of scientific energy. But 
without so much of a draft upon time and native 
powers as this implies, a degeneration of the 
esthetic faculty can be warded off in simpler 
ways—by a fewmonths’ absorption now and 
then in European picture galleries or in Swiss 
mountain scenery, by attaching to oneself afew 
artist friends if opportunity permit, by a breath 
of vigorous English poetry before going to 
sleep at night, or by many another similar de- 
vice. While Darwin is the great example of a 
confessed total atrophy of the esthetic feeling, 
it cannot be denied that in England the scientific 
man is more frequently a man of wider culture 
and experience, that scientific society is less 
likely to be unbearably monotonous and dull, 
than in this country. No doubt there is a 
larger number of cultivated families in England 
out of which the scientific contingent may be 
recruited, but at the same time that peculiar 
American energy which enables many a poor 
boy to become a master in his chosen field of 
intellectual activity would enable him at the 
same time to do something more, if he were 
once to be convinced that the charm of living, 
and hence the only pleasure of living (aside 
from the low pleasure of a gratified ambition), 
is indissolubly connected with the development 
of the sesthetic sensibilities. 
The point to be particularly insisted upon in 
connection with the book before us is that 
reading about art is sometimes no less effective 
than the work of art itself, not only in turning 
the attention to such appeals to artistic enjoy- 
SCIENCE. 
[N. S. Vou. VI. No. 140. 
ment as may fall within one’s field of view, but 
also in producing an actual sharpening of those 
senses through which the art appeal is made.* 
The follower of scientific pursuits will do 
well, therefore, if he does not fail to make him- 
self acquainted with so keen and luminous an 
imparting of the nature of the feeling of the 
artist in the presence of the work of art as this 
book contains. 
In gratitude for so much that is of value, the 
dispassionate reader will doubtless be able to 
overlook, or at least not to lay up against the 
author, the passages of a silly and sickly senti- 
mentality, in'which he maintains, that a zealous 
philanthropy and a pure love of science are but 
the fires of stifled sexual passion bursting out in 
a different form, A thesis so wide of the mark 
as this will be as repugnant to the true artist 
as it is to the clear-brained psychologist, and it 
will find its audience only with those who have 
been made blind to the healthy aspects of 
human life by the novelist of degenerate France. 
C. L. F. 
BALTIMORE, 
* The present reviewer has a definite experience to 
communicate upon this point. Upon one occasion I 
had spent the whole afternoon in reading Charles 
Auchester (a marvellous book, when we consider that 
its author was only seventeen years old when it was 
written). I had been completely absorbed in the 
book, and had had no other thoughts for several 
hours. I then dressed quickly, and went out to 
dinner. The people at the dinner table were all wel 
known to me and I was not expecting anything un- 
usual, but I found to my surprise that I heard them 
with new ears. I perceived that their voices had a 
thousand shades of meaning, revealed a thousand 
qualities of character and mood, that I had hitherto 
been deaf to. It even seemed to me a kind of im- 
modesty to perceive their bare souls so plainly as I 
now did through their voices. I had to use, in order 
to describe this experience, phrases similar to those 
which are common for vision—my ears were opened; 
I felt that hitherto I had heard as through a fog dim- 
ly;my ears had become unveiled; it seemed as if a lot 
of obstructing layers had been peeled off from my 
organ of hearing. If I could only have kept up this 
high tension of the aural intelligence and the aural 
sensitiveness I should, no doubt, have become easily 
a person of better capacity for the enjoyment of music 
that I am now, as well as a keener critic of my fellow 
men. 
