Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/281

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Here we have a score or so of maxims of the prohibitive kind, and the number might be indefinitely increased. There is no doubt the intellectual progress of the world might be hastened, and the good order and harmony of society greatly improved, if these precepts and others like unto them were more carefully observed. Whether we get another "Don't" manual or not, sensible people should think of these things, and try to bring their intellectual habits at least up to a level with their social ones.

 

is in many ways a remarkable book. For some years, not many to be sure, a certain number of critics have been urging the necessity of applying to the study of literature the principles of scientific treatment which has brought forth rich fruit from many seemingly arid sources. While they have been apostrophizing vaguely on the general need of some such change, and generally with but little apparent success, we have in this volume tangible proof of the good results that the method can produce in competent hands. Naturally enough, the mere novelty of the theory excites angry surprise; then, too, the venerable habit of regarding literature and science as two irreconcilable poles of thought has opposed the recognition of the inevitable advance of science into every department of investigation, and it has been held—it is still held—that genius is something which defies analysis as it defies definition; that it was only necessary to have a creative mind to create masterpieces; and that to attempt to show how 