WAYS OF NATURE 
against fact and law,” and do not want or need 
confirmation? If nature study is only to exploit 
your own individuality, why bother about what 
other people have or have not seen or heard? Why, 
in fact, go to the woods at all? Why not sit in your 
study and invent your facts to suit your fancyings ? 
My sole objection to the nature books that are 
the outcome of this proceeding is that they are put 
forth as veritable natural history, and thus mislead 
their readers. They are the result of a successful 
“struggle against fact and law” in a field where 
fact and law should be supreme. No doubt that, 
in the practical affairs of life, one often has a strug- 
gle with the fact. If one’s bank balance gets on 
the negative side of the account, he must struggle to 
get it back where it belongs; he may even have the 
help of the bank’s attorney to get it there. If one 
has a besetting sin of any kind, he has to struggle 
against that. Life is a struggle anyhow, and we are 
all strugglers — struggling to put the facts upon 
our side. But the only struggle the real nature stu- 
dent has with facts is to see them as they are, and 
to read them aright. He is just as zealous for the 
truth as is the man of science. In fact, nature study 
is only science out of school, happy in the fields 
and woods, loving the flower and the animal which 
it observes, and finding in them something for the 
sentiments and the emotions as well as for the under- 
standing. 
202 
