II 



SCIENCE AND LITEEATUEE 



"TNTERESTED as I am in all branches of natural 

 science, and great as is my debt to these things, 

 yet I suppose my interest in nature is not strictly 

 a scientific one. I seldom, for instance, go into a 

 natural history museum without feeling as if I were 

 attending a funeral. There lie the birds and ani- 

 mals stark and stiff, or else, what is worse, stand 

 up in ghastly mockery of life, and the people pass 

 along and gaze at them through the glass with the 

 same cold and unprofitable curiosity that they gaze 

 upon the face of their dead neighbor in his coffin. 

 The fish in the water, the bird in the tree, the 

 animal in the fields or woods, what a different im- 

 pression they make upon us ! 



To the great body of mankind, the view of nature 

 presented through the natural sciences has a good 

 deal of this lifeless funereal character of the speci- 

 mens in the museum. It is dead dissected nature, 

 a cabinet of curiosities carefully labeled and classi- 

 fied. "Every creature sundered from its natural 

 surroundings," says Goethe, "and brought into 

 strange company, makes an unpleasant impression 

 on us, which disappears only by habit." Why is 



