LEAF AND TENDRIL 



geniuses or heroes among them. Hence when our 

 nature fakers claim that they study individuals and 

 not species, they need watching. Let them exploit 

 the individual certainly, but let them be cautious 

 how they claim exceptional traits or intelligence 

 for it. 



Let me return to the editors. One of our most 

 influential weekly journals, in defending the nature 

 fakers against the attack of President Roosevelt, 

 makes this statement : — 



"We quite agree that fiction ought not to be 

 palmed off on school-children as fact; but we do 

 not agree with what is implied, that imagination 

 may not be used in interpreting and narrating facts. 

 Men see through their temperaments ; the imagina- 

 tive man sees through his imagination, and he is 

 telling the truth if he tells what he sees as he sees it. 

 Mr. Froude, who had a vivid historical imagination, 

 was bitterly condemned by Mr. Freeman, who had 

 none ; but Mr. Froude's history is not only interest- 

 ing, while Mr. Freeman's is dull, but very eminent 

 authorities regard him as the better historian of the 

 two." 



Behold what confusion of thought there is in this 

 paragraph. The writer confounds the interpre- 

 tation of facts with the observation of facts; he 

 confounds the world of ideas with the world of 

 concrete experiences ; he confounds the historian of 

 human annals with the eye-witness of daily events in 

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