62 INDOOR STUDIES 



physician said that if he bled and physicked now, as 

 in his early practice, his patients would all die. 

 Are we stronger, more hardy, more virile than our 

 ancestors? We are more comfortable and better 

 schooled than our fathers, but who shall say we are 

 wiser or happier 1 " Knowledge comes, but wisdom 

 lingers," just as it always has and always will. 

 The essential conditions of human life are always the 

 same; the non-essential change with every man and 

 hour. 



Literature is more interested in some branches of 

 science than in others; more interested in meteor- 

 ology than in mineralogy; more interested in the 

 superior sciences, like astronomy and geology, than 

 in the inferior experimental sciences; has a warmer 

 interest in Humboldt the traveler than in Hum- 

 boldt the mineralogist; in Audubon and Wilson 

 than in the experts and feather-splitters who have 

 finished their task ; in Watts, Morse, Pranklin, than 

 in the masters of theories and formulas; and has a 

 greater stake in virtue, heroism, character, beauty, 

 than in all the knowledge in the world. There is 

 no literature without a certain subtle and vital blend- 

 ing of the real and the ideal. 



Unless knowledge in some way issues in life, in 

 character, in impulse, in motive, in love, in virtue, 

 in some live human quality or attribute, it does not 

 belong to literature. Man, and man alone, is of 

 perennial interest to man. In nature we glean only 

 the human traits, — only those things that in some 

 way appeal to, or are interpretative of, the meaning 



