60 INDOOR STUDIES 



than logical steps of his understanding; and his 

 whole interest in physics was a search for a truth 

 above physics, — to get nearer, if possible, to this 

 mystery called nature. "The understanding will 

 not reach her," he said to Eckermann; "man must 

 be capable of elevating himself to the highest reason 

 to come in contact with this divinity, which mani- 

 fests itself in the primitive phenomena, which dwells 

 behind them, and from which they proceed." Of 

 like purport is his remark that the common obser- 

 vations which science makes upon nature and its 

 procedure, "in whatever terms expressed, are really 

 after all only symptoms which, if any real wisdom 

 is to result from ovir studies, must be traced back to 

 the physiological and pathological principles of which 

 they are the exponents." 



Literature, I say, does not keep pace with civ- 

 ilization. That the world is better housed, bet- 

 ter clothed, better fed, better transported, better 

 equipped for war, better armed for peace, more 

 skilled in agriculture, in navigation, in engineering, 

 in surgery, has steam, electricity, gunpowder, dyna- 

 mite, — all of this, it seems, is of little moment to 

 literature. Are men better? Aie men greater? 

 Is life sweeter? These are the test questions. 

 Time has been saved, almost annihilated, by steam 

 and electricity, yet where is the leisure ? The more 

 time we save the less we have. The hurry of the 

 machine passes into the man. We can outrun the 

 wind and the storm, but we cannot outrun the de- 

 mon of Hurry. The farther we go the harder he 



