LITERARY TREATMENT OF NATURE 
guided more by the sense of smell than by anything 
else. Maeterlinck in his “Life of the Bee” has 
much to say about the “spirit of the hive,” and it 
does seem as if there were some mysterious agent 
or power at work there that cannot be located or 
defined. 
This current effort to interpret nature has led one 
of the well-known prophets of the art to say that in 
this act of interpretation one “must struggle against 
fact and law to develop or keep his own individ- 
uality.” This is certainly a curious notion, and I 
think an unsafe one, that the student of nature 
must struggle against fact and law, must ignore or 
override them, in order to give full swing to his 
own individuality. Is it himself, then, and not the 
truth that he is seeking to exploit? In the field of 
natural history we have been led to think the point 
at issue is not man’s individuality, but correct ob- 
servation — a true report of the wild life about us. 
Is one to give free rein to his fancy or imagination; 
to see animal life with his “vision,” and not with his 
corporeal eyesight; to hear with his transcendental 
ear, and not through his auditory nerve? This may 
be all right in fiction or romance or fable, but why 
call the outcome natural history ? Why set it down 
as a record of actual observation? Why penetrate 
the wilderness to interview Indians, trappers, guides, 
woodsmen, and thus seek to confirm your obser- 
vations, if you have all the while been “struggling 
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