SCIENCE RESCUING LITERATURE.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 13, 23 December 1911, Page 15

SCIENCE RESCUING LITERATURE.

One does not look in the pages of a scientific publication for an appeal for a better appreciation of literature, nor does tho thought of our time couple literature and science in any intimate way, unless to regard interest in the ono as arguing indill'eronce to the other. To Professor Sidney Gunn, of the, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, however, there is not only no such abyss between them as is usually taken for granted, but thero is a responsibility upon scientific men to do something to bring about a clearer understanding of tho real significance of literature. Writing in "Scienco" under the beading "Science and Literature," he draws up a triple indictment of literary activity of our day. Those who produce literature aro, to an aliuost unprecedented extent, the intellectually petty and the spiritually contemptible. Those who assumb to teach it are apt to be pedantic. And those who read it aro more concerned with it as a reproduction of man's external and i artificial environment than of his iunei- being. Tho bringing about of tho production of enduring literature and tho imparting to the public of an ability to detect aud appreciate it, Professor, Gunn looks upon as too great a task to be attempted in any formal way; Yet something might be done by tho saving remnant of scientific men who love literature, and whose influence, because of tho present-day worship of scientific opinion, would be very great. Nothing could more completely exhibit tho dominance of tho scientific spirit than this proposed rescuo of literature through its agency. How dramatic it would be I Hero art) Homer and Virgil and Dante and Shakespeare, almost driven from the field by the hosts of Lilliputian writers. Their natural champions are about to abandon tho strugglo in despair. All seems lost. But just as the battalions of best-sellers aro on tho point of making an end of the last scattered standard-bearers of the classics, a mighty trumpet-blast is heard, aud the cavalry of science, fresh from its triumphs oyer molecules and germs, dashes up beside tho few feeble supporters that are left of poetic and dramatic genius. In a moment the tido is turned. Literature is saved, and scieuco has registered another and by- no means its least notable triumph. Such a victory, it may bo presumed, the merely literary lovers of literature would accept graciously, moro especially as to them it might seem in tho nature of a restoration of tho field from which the begiuning of their dislodguient had been duo to the very forces that in this strango way had now appeared as allies instead of enemies. For to what aro dun the "slavish worship of tho literal fact" in the teaching of literature, its "bald and inert information about literary forms or historical relationships," and the fallacy of mistaking the study of philology for tho study of literature, of all of which Professor Gunn rightly complains, if not to a heroic attempt to apply to literature that scientific method which we are readily assured is the glory of our age? At the same timo, it is a littte humiliating to see this attempt derided by a representative of scicnce. Such an occurrence goes some distance toward justifying his implication that, if literature is to bo saved at all, it will havo to bo by its scientific rather thau by its purely literary admirers. Are there, thon, more important inquiries in reference to tho Canterbury Tales than the exact route that the pilgrims followed, or the precise, poiutls at which tho Knight began and ended his tale? Is thero more to tho story of Cinderella than the problem of which slipper sho lost? If science should so pronounoe, then; according' t0,,-their., own, practice, multitudes of . literary students and teachers would be bound to accent her warning that tho scientific spirit "is too crude an, instrument, for the fabric with which they are dealing. It is true that something like this has been said over and over with little effect. But it is only when scienco herself expressly declares the inapplicability of tho scientific method that wo can feel safe in discarding it. Tho comforting feature of Professor Gunn s criticism is that it is as severe ui?pn the shortcomings of scientific men with reforence to ,thoir own realm as upon tho devotees of literature. Not modesty, but indifference, ho holds, is the reason for the scientific man's disinclination to express an opinion upon matters outside of his particular field. W hat is needed in both science and literature is a renascence of ideas and a broadening of interest. In our haste to become learned aud clever and striking, wo havo forgotten that wisdom is more than knowledge, and passion more fef x -5 lte LT n A; Trnth hare contracted to fit tho compartment of fact. , iT J 6 havo " on e <u literatnre : without at the name time doing the ' one thing that alone could redeem it. 1 no have not clothed our externals and 1 our superficialities m a stylo that would 1 , to ,., latcr -ages' specimens of the 1 i ?• productions which givo 1 us delight. Mediocre conceptions, poorly 1 clothed could a worse condition be imag- 1 V let • one: That of not caring to ' lead at all. Whatever else we aro or I aro not, wo are as eager for the printed ' page as ever the Elizabethans were for ' sonorous rhetoric. And, as out of their > insatiable demand for mere word-ploy I arose in the end such examples of it as < purple the pages of "Hamlet" and "Mac- < th, so, perhaps, there shall arise I among us some who, tiking advantage of c onr very. ommvorousness. shall give us < to feed oncc more on fit and large utterance. New York "Nationa." (