SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY
If there is one central idea which it is hoped a young reader might
find in the foregoing pages, it is this: that literature is for
everyone, young or old, who has the capacity to enjoy it, that no
special fitness is required but the gift of a little imagination,
that no particular training can prepare us for the reading of books
except the very act of reading. For literature is addressed to the
imagination; that is, a work which touches the imagination becomes
Literature as distinguished from all other printed things. By virtue
of its imagination it becomes permanent, it remains intelligible
to the human being of every race and age, the only conditions of
intelligibility being that the reader shall be literate and that the
book shall be in the language in which the reader has been brought up
or in a foreign tongue which he has learned to read. We have insisted
on a kind of liberty, equality, and union in the world of writers
and readers, and have, perhaps needlessly, made a declaration of
independence against all scholars, philosophers, and theorists who try
to put obstacles in our way and arrogate to themselves exclusive rights
and privileges, special understandings of the world’s literature.
We believe that literature is intended for everybody and that it is
addressed to everybody by the creative mind of art. We believe that
all readers are equal in the presence of a book or work of art, but
we hastily qualify this, as we must qualify the political doctrine of
equality. No two men are really equal, no two persons will get the
same pleasure and benefit from any book. But the inequalities are
natural and not artificial. Of a thousand persons of all ages who read
the “Iliad,” the hundred who get the most out of it will include men,
women, and children, some who have “higher” education and some who
have not, well-informed men and uninformed boys. The hundred will be
those who have the most imagination. The boy of fourteen who has an
active intelligence can understand Shakespeare better than the least
imaginative of those who have taken the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
in English at our universities. The man of imagination, even if he has
taken the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, will find deeper delight
and wisdom in Shakespeare than the uninformed boy. Readers differ
in individual capacities and in the extent of their experience in
intellectual matters. But class differences, especially school-made
differences, are swept away by the power of literature, which abhors
inessential distinctions and goes direct to the human intelligence.
The direct appeal of literature to the human intelligence and human
emotions is what we mean by our principle of union. Nothing can divorce
us from the poet if we have a spark of poetry in us. The contact of
mind between poet and reader is immediate, and is effected without any
go-between, any intercessor or critical negotiator.
Now, what happens to the principles of our declaration of independence
and the constitution of our democracy of readers when we open to a
page of one of Darwin’s works on biology, or a page of the philosopher
Plato, and find that we do not get the sense of it at all? We can
understand the “Iliad,” the “Book of Job,” “Macbeth,” “Faust”;
they mean _something_ to us, even if we do not receive their whole
import. But here, in two great thinkers who have influenced the whole
intellectual world, Plato and Darwin, we come upon pages that to us
mean absolutely nothing. The works of Plato and Darwin are certainly
literature. But they are something else besides: they are science, and
the understanding of them depends on a knowledge of the science that
went before the particular pages that are so meaningless to us. Here
is a kind of literature, the mere reading of which requires special
training.
We may call this the Literature of Information as distinguished from
the Literature of Imagination. The distinction is not sharp; a book
leans to one side or the other of the line, but it does not fall clear
of the line. A work of imagination, a poem, a novel, or an essay, may
contain abundant information, may be loaded with facts; on the other
hand, the greatest of those who have discovered and expounded facts,
Darwin, Gibbon, Huxley, have had literary power and imagination. But
most great works of imagination deal with universal experiences, they
treat human nature and common humanity’s thought and feelings about the
world. As Hazlitt says, nature and feeling are the same in all periods.
So the common man understands the “Iliad,” and the story of Joseph and
his brothers, and “The Scarlet Letter” and “Silas Marner.”
In Macaulay’s “Essay on Milton” is a very misleading piece of
philosophizing on the “progress of poesy.” It is a pity, when there
are so many better essays--Macaulay wrote twenty better ones--that
this should be selected for reading in the schools as part of the
requirements for college entrance. Macaulay sees that the “Iliad” is as
great a poem as the world has known. He also sees that science in his
own time is progressing by leaps and bounds, that, in his own vigorous
words, “any intelligent man may now, by resolutely applying himself
for a few years to mathematics, learn more than the great Newton knew
after half a century of study and meditation.” He accordingly reasons,
or rather makes the long jump, that whereas science progresses,
poetry declines with the advance of civilization, and the wonder is
that Milton should have written so great a poem in a “civilized” age.
Macaulay was young when he wrote the essay; he seldom muddled ideas
as badly as that. Poetry, if we view the history of the world in
five-century periods, neither advances nor declines. It fluctuates from
century to century, but it keeps a general permanent level. Now and
again appears a new poet to add to the number of poems, but poetry
does _not_ change. Neither does the individual poem. The “Iliad”
is precisely what it was two thousand years ago, and two thousand
years from now it will be neither diminished nor augmented. Creative
art, dealing with universal ideas and feelings and needing only a
well-developed language to work in, can produce a masterpiece in any
one of forty countries any time the genius is born capable of doing
the work. This statement is too simple to exhaust a large subject. The
point is that once man has reached a certain point of culture, has
come to have a language and a religion and a national tradition, more
civilization or less, more science or less, neither helps nor hinders
his art. The arrival of a great poet can be counted on every two or
three centuries. It is because poetry and other forms of imaginative
literature are independent of time and progress that the reader’s
ability to understand them is independent of time and progress. Our
boys can understand the “Iliad.” Fetch a Greek boy back from ancient
Athens and give us his Greek tongue and we can interest him in Milton’s
story of Satan in half a day. But it will take a year or two to make
him understand an elementary schoolbook about electricity. The great
ideas about human nature and human feelings and about the visible
world and the gods men dream of and believe in, these are the stuff of
Imaginative Literature; they have been expressed over and over again
in all ages and are intelligible to a Chinaman or an Englishman of
the year one thousand or the year two thousand. That is why we are
all citizens in the democracy of readers. That is why we do not need
special knowledge to read “Hamlet,” why the most direct preparation for
the reading of “Hamlet” is the reading of “Macbeth” and “Lear.”
Now, all special subjects, biology, geology, zoölogy, political
economy, are continually being forced by the imaginative power of great
writers into the realm of Imaginative Literature. Poetry is full of
philosophy. Our novels are shot through and through with problems of
economics. Great expositors like Huxley and Mill are working over and
interpreting the discoveries of science, relating them to our common
life and making, not their minute facts but their bearing, clear to the
ordinary man. So that there is a great deal of science and philosophy
within the reach of the untrained reader. And a wide general reading
prepares any person, by giving him a multitude of hints and stray bits
of information, to make his way through a technical volume devoted to
one special subject. The moral talks of Socrates to Athenian youths
lead one on, as Socrates seems to have intended to lead those boys
on, into the uttermost fields of philosophy. The genial essayists,
Stevenson, Lamb, Emerson, are all tinged with philosophy and science,
at least the social and political sciences. And when an idle reader
approaches a new subject, economics, chemistry, or philosophy, he often
finds with delight that he has been reading about it all his life. He
is like the man in Molière’s comedy who was surprised to find that he
had always been speaking prose.
Yet there remains a good deal of the Literature of Information which
can be understood only after a gradual approach to it through other
works. You must learn the elements of chemistry before you can
understand the arguments of the modern men of science about radium.
You must read some elementary discussions of economics before you can
take part in the arguments about protection and free trade, socialism,
banking, and currency.
At this point the Guide to Reading parts company with you and leaves
you in the hands of the economists, the historians, the chemists, the
philosophers. Special teachers and advisers will conduct you into those
subjects. They are organized subjects. The paths to them are steep but
well graded and paved. If you wander upon these paths without guidance
you will not harm yourself, and, if you do not try to discuss what you
do not understand, you will not harm anyone else. The list of works in
philosophy and science which I append includes some that I, an errant
reader, have stumbled into with pleasure and profit. I do not know
surely whether any one of them is the best in its subject or whether
it is the proper work to read first. I only know in general that a
civilized man should for his own pleasure and enlightenment set his
wits against a hard technical book once in a while for the sake of the
exercise, and that although for purposes of wisdom and happiness the
Literature of the Ages contains all that is necessary, everybody ought
to go a little way into some special subject that lies less in the
realm of literature than in the realm of science.
LIST OF WORKS IN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY
_Supplementary to Chapter XIII_
In this list are a few volumes of scientific and philosophic works,
notable for their literary excellence, or for their clearness to the
general reader, or for the historical and human importance of the
author. There is no attempt at order or system except the alphabetical
sequence of authors. Some philosophic and scientific works will be
found in the list of essays, on page 192.
GRANT ALLEN. _The Story of the Plants._
In _Appleton’s Library of Useful Stories_.
MARCUS AURELIUS ANTONINUS. _Thoughts or Meditations._
In _Everyman’s Library_ and many cheap editions.
JOHN LUBBOCK (Lord Avebury). _The Beauties of Nature and the Wonders
of the World We Live In._ _The Use of Life._
A popular writer on scientific and philosophic subjects.
LIBERTY HYDE BAILEY. _First Lessons with Plants._ _Garden Making._
ROBERT STAWELL BALL. _The Earth’s Beginning._ _Star-Land: Being Talks
with Young People._
JOHN BURROUGHS. _Birds and Bees and Other Studies in Nature._
_Squirrels and Other Fur Bearers._
These books are especially suitable for young readers.
CHARLES TRIPLER CHILD. _The How and Why of Electricity._
For the uninformed reader.
JAMES DWIGHT DANA. _The Geological Story Briefly Told._
CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN. _On the Origin of Species._ _What Mr. Darwin
Saw in His Voyage Round the World in the Ship “Beagle.”_
The second of the two books named is especially for young readers.
The book from which it is taken, Darwin’s “Journal” of the voyage is
in _Everyman’s Library_. For expositions of Darwin’s theories, see
Huxley’s “Darwiniana,” Wallace’s “Darwinism” and David Starr Jordan’s
“Footnotes to Evolution.”
GOLDSWORTHY LOWES DICKINSON. _The Greek View of Life._ _A Modern
Symposium._
ROBERT KENNEDY DUNCAN. _The New Knowledge._
A popular exposition of theories of matter that have developed since
the discovery of radioactivity. Intelligible to any (intelligent)
high-school pupil.
EPICTETUS. _Discourses._
The English translation in _Bohn’s Library_.
FRANCIS GALTON. _Natural Inheritance._ _Inquiries into Human Faculty._
The second volume is in _Everyman’s Library_.
ARCHIBALD GEIKIE. _Class-Book of Geology._
HENRY GEORGE. _Our Land and Land Policy._ _The Science of Political
Economy._
ASA GRAY. _Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States._
ARTHUR TWINING HADLEY. _The Education of the American Citizen._
HERMANN LUDWIG FERDINAND VON HELMHOLTZ. _Popular Lectures on
Scientific Subjects._
In the English translation by Edmund Atkinson with Helmholtz’s
“Autobiography” and an introduction by Tyndall.
KARL HILTY. _Happiness: Essays on the Meaning of Life._
Translated by Francis Greenwood Peabody.
WILLIAM TEMPLE HORNADAY. _The American Natural History._
CHARLES DE FOREST HOXIE. _How the People Rule; Civics for Boys and
Girls._
THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY. _Darwiniana._ _Evolution and Ethics._ _Man’s
Place in Nature._
Huxley is the greatest man of letters among modern English men of
science. A volume of his essays is in _Everyman’s Library_.
ERNEST INGERSOLL. _Book of the Ocean._
Especially for young people.
HAROLD JACOBY. _Practical Talks by an Astronomer._
WILLIAM JAMES. _The Principles of Psychology._ _The Will to Believe._
HERBERT KEIGHTLY JOB. _Among the Water-Fowl._
DAVID STARR JORDAN. _True Tales of Birds and Beasts._
Especially for young readers.
WILLIAM THOMSON (Lord Kelvin). _Popular Lectures and Addresses._
HENRY DEMAREST LLOYD. _Wealth Against Commonwealth._
An important work on modern economic and business problems.
JOHN STUART MILL. _On Liberty._ _Principles of Political Economy._
JOHN MORLEY. _On Compromise._
HUGO MÜNSTERBERG. _Psychology and Life._ _On the Witness Stand._
FREDERIC WILLIAM HENRY MYERS. _Science and a Future Life._
SIMON NEWCOMB. _Astronomy for Everybody._
GEORGE HERBERT PALMER. _The Field of Ethics._ _The Nature of Goodness._
WALTER HORATIO PATER. _Plato and Platonism._
FRIEDRICH PAULSEN. _Introduction to Philosophy._
The excellent English translation affords within easy compass a view
of philosophy equal to several elementary courses in philosophy at a
university. It may be begun by any young man or woman of, say, eighteen.
PLATO. _Dialogues._
The “Republic” is in _Everyman’s Library_ and in other cheap editions.
Several of the dialogues are to be found under the title, “Trial and
Death of Socrates” in the _Golden Treasury Series_. See also Walter
Pater’s “Plato and Platonism.” The great Plato in English is Jowett’s.
JACOB AUGUST RIIS. _The Battle with the Slum._ _How the Other Half
Lives._ _The Children of the Poor._
Among the most sensible, sympathetic and human of modern works on
sociology.
JOSIAH ROYCE. _The Spirit of Modern Philosophy._ _Studies of Good and
Evil._ _The World and the Individual._
“The Spirit of Modern Philosophy” is a beautifully written introduction
to the study of philosophy.
GEORGE SANTAYANA. _The Sense of Beauty._ _Poetry and Religion._
GARRETT PUTNAM SERVISS. _Astronomy with an Opera Glass._
NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER. _Aspects of the Earth._ _The Individual: A
Study of Life and Death._ _Nature and Man in America._
DALLAS LORE SHARP. _A Watcher in the Woods._ _Wild Life Near Home._
HENRY SIDGWICK. _The Elements of Politics._ _The Methods of Ethics._
HERBERT SPENCER. _First Principles._ _The Principles of Ethics._ _The
Principles of Sociology._
SILVANUS PHILLIPS THOMPSON. _Elementary Lessons in Electricity and
Magnetism._
RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH. _On the Study of Words._
Contains all the philology that anyone needs.
JOHN TYNDALL. _Fragments of Science._ _New Fragments._ _Essays on the
Imagination in Science._ _Glaciers of the Alps and Mountaineering in
1861._
The last volume is in _Everyman’s Library_, with an introduction by
Lord Avebury.
ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE. _Man’s Place in the Universe._ _The Malay
Archipelago._ _Australia and New Zealand._
GILBERT WHITE. _Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne._
In _Everyman’s Library_.
WILHELM WINDELBAND. _History of Ancient Philosophy._
WALTER AUGUSTUS WYCKOFF. _The Workers: An Experiment in Reality._
The story of a professor of economics and sociology who became a
laborer. Interesting as a story and a good popular introduction to the
problems of labor and wages.
THE END
* * * * *
Transcriber’s note
Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice. Hyphenation,
italics, and spelling of personal names were standardized.
The following changes were made:
Page 104: “Make my thy lyre” “Make me thy lyre”
Page 179: “Homor, who, according” “Homer, who, according”
Page 196: “Dr. Quincey’s beautiful” “De Quincey’s beautiful”
Page 215: “have “Eugenie Grandet”” “have “Eugénie Grandet””