IN THE NOON OF SCIENCE 



tific principles, originality in mind and in character 

 fades. Science tends to eliminate the local, the in- 

 dividual; it favors the general, the universal. It 

 makes our minds and characters all alike; it unifies 

 the nations, but it tames and, in a measure, dena- 

 tures them. The more we live in the scientific 

 spirit, the spirit of material knowledge, the farther 

 we are from the spirit of true literature. The more 

 we live upon the breath of the newspaper, the more 

 will the mental and spiritual condition out of which 

 come real literature and art be barred to us. The 

 more we live in the hard, calculating business spirit, 

 the farther are we from the spirit of the master pro- 

 ductions; the more we surrender ourselves to the 

 feverish haste and competition of the industrial 

 spirit, the more the doors of the heaven of the great 

 poems and works of art are closed to us. 



Beyond a certain point in our culture, exact 

 knowledge counts for so much less than sympathy, 

 love, appreciation. We may know Shakespeare to 

 an analysis of his last word or allusion, and yet miss 

 Shakespeare entirely. We may know an animal in 

 the light of all the many tests that laboratory ex- 

 perimentation throws upon it, and yet not really 

 know it at all. We are not content to know what the 

 animal knows naturally, we want to know what it 

 knows unnaturally. We put it through a sort of in- 

 quisitorial torment in the laboratory, we starve it, 

 we electrocute it, we freeze it, we burn it, we incar- 

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