SCIENCE AND LITERATURE 63 



or ideal within us. Unless the account of your 

 excursion to field and forest, or to the bowels of the 

 earth, or to the bottom of the sea, has some human 

 interest, and in some measure falls in with the fes- 

 tival of life, literature will none of it. 



All persons are interested in the live bird and in 

 the live animal, because they dimly read themselves 

 there, or see their own lives rendered in new charac- 

 ters on another plane. Mowers, trees, rivers, lakes, 

 mountains, rocks, clouds, the rain, the sea, are far 

 more interesting to literature, because they are more 

 or less directly related to our natural lives, and 

 serve as vehicles for the expression of our natural 

 emotions. That which is more directly related to 

 what may be called our artificial life, our need for 

 shelter, clothing, food, transportation — such as the 

 factory, the mill, the forge, the railway, and the 

 whole catalogue of useful arts, — is of less interest, 

 and literature is shyer of it. And it may be ob- 

 served that the more completely the thing is taken 

 out of nature and artifioialized, the less interest 

 we take in it. Thus the sailing vessel is more 

 pleasing to contemplate than the steamer; the old 

 grist-mill, with its dripping water-wheel, than the 

 steam- mill; the open fire than the stove or regis- 

 ter. Tools and implements are not so interesting as 

 weapons; nor the trades as the pursuit of hunting, 

 fishing, surveying, exploring. A jackknife is not so 

 interesting as an arrow-head, a rifle as a war-club, 

 a watch as an hour-glass, a threshing-machine as the 

 flying flail. Commerce is less interesting to litera- 



