LITERARY TREATMENT OF NATURE 



that point of view; but he must always be true to 

 the facts of the case, and to the limited intelligence 

 for which he speaks. 



In the humanization of the animals, and of the 

 facts of natural history which is supposed to be the 

 province of literature in this field, we must recog- 

 nize certain limits. Your facts are sufficiently hu- 

 manized the moment they become interesting, and 

 they become interesting the moment you relate 

 them in any way to our lives, or make them sug- 

 gestive of what we know to be true in other fields 

 and in our own experience. Thoreau made his bat- 

 tle of the ants interesting because he made it illus- 

 trate all the human traits of courage, fortitude, 

 heroism, self-sacrifice. Bums's mouse at once strikes 

 a sympathetic chord in us without ceasing to be a 

 mouse; we see ourselves in it. To attribute human 

 motives and faculties to the animals is to carica- 

 ture them; but to put us in such relation with them 

 that we feel their kinship, that we see their lives 

 embosomed in the same iron necessity as our own, 

 that we see in their minds a humbler manifestation 

 of the same psychic power and intelligence that 

 culminates and is conscious of itself in man, — 

 that, I take it, is the true humanization. 



We Uke to see ourselves in the nature around us. 

 We want in some way to translate these facts and 

 laws of outward nature into our own experiences; 

 to relate our observations of bird or beast to our 

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