54 INDOOR STUDIES 



But this can never be. Literature will have its 

 period of decadence and of partial eclipse ; but the 

 chief interest of mankind in nature or in the uni- 

 verse can never be for any length of time a merely 

 scientific interest, — an interest measured by our 

 exact knowledge of these things; though it must 

 undoubtedly be an interest consistent with the sci- 

 entific view. Think of having one's interest in a 

 flower, a bird, the landscape, the starry skies, de- 

 pendent upon the stimulus afi'orded by the text- 

 books, or dependent upon our knowlege of the struc- 

 ture, habits, functions, relations of these objects! 



This other and larger interest in natural objects, 

 to which I refer, is an interest as old as' the race 

 itself, and which all men, learned and unlearned 

 alike, feel in some degree, — an interest born of our 

 relations to these things, of our associations with 

 them. It is the human sentiments they awaken 

 and foster in us, the emotion of love or admiration, 

 or awe or fear, they call up ; and is in fact the in- 

 terest of literature as distinguished from that of 

 science. The admiration one feels for a flower, for 

 a person, for a fine view, for a noble deed, the pleas- 

 ure one takes iu a spring morning, in a stroll upon 

 the beach, is the admiration and the pleasure litera- 

 ture feels and art feels; only in them the feeling is 

 freely opened and expanded which in most minds is 

 usually vague and germinal. Science has its own 

 pleasure in these things ; but it is not, as a rule, a 

 pleasure in which the mass of mankind can share, 

 because it is not directly related to the human affec- 



