LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 
how to secure its physical well-being. Literature 
interprets life and nature in terms of our sentiments 
and emotions; science interprets them in terms of 
our understanding. 
The habit of mind begotten by the contemplation 
of Nature, and by our emotional intercourse with 
her, is in many ways at enmity with the habit of 
mind begotten by the scientific study of Nature. 
The former has given us literature, art, religion; out 
of the latter has come our material civilization. Out 
of it has also come our enlarged conception of the 
physical universe, and a true insight as to our re- 
lations with it, albeit this gain seems to have 
been purchased, more or less, at the expense of that 
state of mind that in the past has given us the great 
poets and prophets and religious teachers and in- 
spirers. 
The saying of Coleridge, that the real antithesis 
to poetry is not prose but science, is of permanent 
value. When we look upon nature and life as the 
poet does, or as does an emotional, imaginative 
being, we see quite a different world from the one 
we see when, armed with chemistry and physics, 
we go forth to analyze it and appraise it in terms of 
exact knowledge. Science is cold and calculating, 
and can only deal with verifiable fact. And by far 
the larger part of nature and of life is unverifiable, 
and therefore beyond the province of science. Sci- 
ence strips Nature to her bare bones; literature and 
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