XI 
LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 
I 
T is not in the act of seeing things or apprehend- 
ing facts that we differ so much from one an- 
other, as in the act of interpreting what we see or 
apprehend. Interpretation opens the door to the 
play of temperament and imagination, and to the 
bias of personality, and is therefore within the 
sphere of literature. A mind that has a lively fancy 
and a sense of mystery will interpret phenomena 
quite differently from a mind in which these things 
are absent. The poetic, the religious, the ethical 
mind will never be satisfied with the interpretation 
of the physical universe given us by the scientific 
mind. To these mental types such an interpreta- 
tion seems hard and barren; it leaves a large part of 
our human nature unsatisfied. If a man of science 
were to explain to a mother all the physical proper- 
ties, functions, and powers of her baby, and all its 
natural history, would the mother see her baby in 
such a portraiture? Would he have told her why 
she loves it? It is the province of literature and art 
to tell her why she loves it, and to make her love it 
more; of science, to tell her how she came by it, and 
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