LITERARY TREATMENT OF NATURE 



of the carving and sculpturing of the landscape? 

 or of a thousand and one other things in the organic 

 and inorganic world about us ? Science alone can 

 answer. But if we mean by interpretation an an- 

 swer to the inquiry, "What does this scene or in- 

 cident suggest to you ? how do you feel about it ? " 

 then we come to what is called the literary or poetic 

 interpretation of nature, which, strictly speaking, 

 is no interpretation of nature at all, but an interpre- 

 tation of the writer or the poet himself. The poet 

 or the essayist tells what the bird, or the tree, or 

 the cloud means to him. It is himself, therefore, 

 that is being interpreted. What do Ruskin's writ- 

 ings upon nature interpret.'^ They interpret Rus- 

 kin — his wealth of moral and ethical ideas, and 

 his wonderful imagination. Richard Jefferies tells 

 us how the flower, or the bird, or the cloud is re- 

 lated to his subjective life and experience. It means 

 this or that to him; it may mean something en- 

 tirely different to another, because he may be bound 

 to it by a different tie of association. The poet fills 

 the lap of Earth with treasures not her own — the 

 riches of his own spirit; science reveals the trea- 

 sures that are her own, and arranges and appraises 

 them. 



Strictly speaking, there is not much in natural 

 history that needs interpreting. We explain a fact, 

 we interpret an oracle; we explain the action and 

 relation of physical laws and forces, we interpret, 

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