December 21, 1888.] 



SCIENCE. 



305 



is not a valid objection that generalizations, even obtained a poste- 

 riori, have often been erroneous. So much the greater necessity 

 for their trial by a proper tribunal ; for the end is to establish from 

 particular facts a general law, which thereupon may be considered as 

 a principal fact, explaining and showing the relations between the 

 facts which it governs. This second course is deductive, in which the 

 value of the conclusion is that of the premises. The collection of 

 and proper deduction from, more strictly the application of, such 

 principal facts or induced laws, is the domain of philosophy. 



The vocabulary employed by an ecumenical society should be 

 different from that proper to a specialty. It should be such as is 

 understood by an audience of good general education. It is true 

 that the actual operation and formulation of thought in many 

 branches, notably chemistry and botany, besides mathematics, re- 

 quires the elaborate technical language and symbols invented for 

 them ; and in all lines of study condensation and determination 

 have demanded neologisms, which increase daily with new facts 

 and thoughts. But workers with these newly fashioned termino- 

 logic tools become too fond of and dependent on them. 



In the use of specialistic and coined terminology, not only ped- 

 antry may be observed, but the old juggle with words, in which 

 pretended novelty is only mystification. Greek compounds are con- 

 venient as brands or labels, but do not make thought less, and 

 often leave it more obscure. ' Polysyllables and water are bad, but 

 polysyllables and mud are worse. Such obscuration of truth is a 

 serious injury. From these views it must be admitted that philos- 

 ophy, being broader than any science, — than all the sciences to- 

 gether, — cannot be limited by the formulation peculiar to any of 

 them, and therefore its language should not adopt the terms of 

 any, but use such as are generally understood and accepted. 



This admission at once brings up the subject of style in its 

 broadest scope. The prime requisite of style in philosophic as 

 distinguished from specialistic writing is, that it should be clear to 

 all ; the second, that it should be attractive. It is not so easy to 

 be clear; and Sheridan's phrase, " Easy writing's curs'd hard read- 

 ing," is enforced by the confession of so great a thinker and writer 

 as Charles Darwin. Style is not confined to vocabulary or orna- 

 mentation. It is the treatment which, by the mental work of pres- 

 entation, the author putting himself in the place of the reader, 

 enters into substance, and translates from his own mind to many 

 minds. A large number of examples were given of the use of style 

 well and ill, by scientific and non-scientific modern writers of Eng- 

 lish. 



It is not proposed, however, to offer a disquisition on style. But 

 as Wesley once protested, in words rendered more pungent by 

 Elder Knapp," against "the Devil having all the best tunes," it is 

 desired to enter a vigorous protest against fiction having all the 

 best English. Two suggestions only will be ventured, both per- 

 haps unexpected. The first is that poetry should be incorporated, 

 not injected, into a scientific production. This does not renew the 

 adjudicated claim of the imagination — " the vision and the faculty 

 divine" — to scientific use, but refers to the manner of expression. 

 Never let prose get into your poetry, but put all the poetry you can 

 invoke into your prose. Moliere's hero was astonished to learn 

 that he had been talking prose all his life without knowing it ; and, 

 conversely, our best prose-writers on the heaviest subjects might 

 find that the poetry in their prose was the secret of their success. 

 This conception of poetry does not mean the evanescent prismatic 

 tints on the bubbles of a scientaster or scientulus, — whichever 

 term may suit the diminutive pretender, — but the informing and 

 vitalizing light, which not only refracts and reflects, but radiates 

 from an original source. The spontaneous characterization of the 

 highest order of prose writings is that they are full of light, fire, 

 and life; and the term ' poet," applied to their authors, shows its 

 true etymology, — the maker. 



The second plea is for the admission of wit and humor into sci- 

 entific writing. No one, not even Sydney Smith's Scotchman, is 

 willing to confess his imperception of humor. Nevertheless nature 

 has not given it to every one ; and to those to whom it is denied it 

 is as the absence of a sixth sense, by which absence much happi- 

 ness is lost. This enumeration of humor with the senses is scarcely 

 forced, for man has been styled the ' laughing animal." as best dis- 

 tinguishing him from other orders. Neither the grin of some 



simians nor the cachinnation of the hyena, nor any similar demon- 

 strations by other animals, represent human smiles and laughter. 

 The deficiency may be compared with unappreciation of the arts in 

 general ; but the histrionic art is that on which there is least con- 

 troversy. Every man who is in the normal possession of his senses 

 appreciates perfect acting. Dr. Johnson suffered from bad vision 

 and hearing, and therefore never could reconcile himself to the over- 

 whelming success of his friend David Garrick as an actor. Trans- 

 late his physical imperfections, while admitting his general judg- 

 ment, into terms of humor, and it may be understood how many 

 good and wise people fail to enjoy it. With them the dogma is 

 naturally cherished that a witty man is always shallow. Sydney 

 Smith, who knew whereof he spoke, says, " The moment an envi- 

 ous pedant sees any thing written with pleasantry, he comforts 

 himself that it inust be superficial." Many people admire senten- 

 tious monotony, even if it be stupidity, and are shocked too much 

 for their delicate nerves at the sudden presentation of an intellec- 

 tual surprise. Yet what is more forcible ? Is there any mode in 

 which truth can be more strongly presented than by its humorous 

 opposite? If the dry rcductio ad absurdiim is legitimate, how 

 much better is it when laughter brings an echo! Laughter must 

 be : therefore philosophy cannot ignore it. 



Both science and philosophy are separated from literature by 

 well-established boundaries. Passing by philosophy for the mo- 

 ment, the distinction between science and literature maybe sharply 

 drawn by recognizing that science deals with facts regardless of 

 the vehicle of their expression. Literature, on the contrary, may 

 disregard all facts as such, while occupied with reflection and sen- 

 timent ; and in it the form of expression is essential. There is a 

 literature of science and of all the sciences ; but few scientific works 

 can be embraced in literature, if only because of their defective 

 form. 



The favorite but not vallated domain of literature is aesthetics in 

 its true meaning, — viz., that which is perceived or apprehended by 

 the senses, but limited to what is desirable to be so apprehended, 

 the beautiful (the Greek -o naUv), — and, even if the spirit of lit- 

 erature abandons this Elysian realm, the form cannot depart from 

 it and live. Specimens of literature may properly be stigmatized as 

 bad, — bad in tendency and effect, as in their influence upon mor- 

 als, religion, politics, and the like; but literature cannot be bad 

 in form, because, if its form is not aesthetically good, it is not liter- 

 ature at all. It has been asserted that in literature the substance 

 is of little moment — only the form, the manner in which the things 

 are written, and not the things. An argument can be made in sup- 

 port of this dictum. Even the utilitarian must admit that the 

 struggle for perfection in language — comprising vocabulary and 

 grammatic form — for itself alone has presented to both science 

 and philosophy their vehicle, and has established for humanity its 

 imperial distinction over the rest of living beings. 



Some advocates of form versus substance might quote favorite 

 passages of Emerson or Browning that cannot be understood, as 

 is proved by so many diverse interpretations. But while aesthetic 

 form is undoubtedly essential in literature, comprehensible thought 

 must be there also. The smoothest iambics and most stately hex- 

 ameters which exercise in Latin prosody the scholars of Eton and 

 Harrow, technically styled ' nonsense verses,' are not literature. 



It may seem bold to assert that literature should not meddle 

 with science, when every novel brings into its machinery some sci- 

 entific statement or discussion, and as fast as each new discovery 

 appears it is seized upon by the romancer for his plot as a deiis ex 

 machina. But, if this employment is more than machinery or in- 

 cident, the novel becomes a dilute treatise, and is not proper liter- 

 ary work. 



A rough contradistinction may be outlined, that science deals 

 with facts, the thoughts being secondary ; literature with thoughts, 

 the facts being secondary ; but philosophy includes equally the 

 facts and the thoughts relative to them. Science supplies food, 

 but neither savor nor digestion ; literature pleases the appetite ; 

 philosophy with appetite digests the food. Again : to science the 

 language used is subordinate ; to literature the language is para- 

 mount ; to philosophy the language is essential, but not para- 

 mount. 



It remains to offer the suggestion that philosophy should also be 



