I

If the races of men should suddenly disappear from the earth, leaving only the animals, great changes would take place. For a time, the works of men would remain, but gradually the lofty buildings in our cities would crumble and collapse, the railroads would become thin lines of rusty steel buried in tangles of weeds, farms would be covered with brush and with great forests, the roads would become merely paths for animals, and in place of fertile fields and villages and busy cities the ancient jungle would return. External Nature would remain much the same as now. Season would succeed season, the rivers would flow as majestically as ever to the sea, the moon and stars would shine or would be blotted out by great storms; the woods would be filled

with the music of bird song or the fragrance of flowers, or, in winter, would be clothed in their mantle of snow. And the animal world would be much the same as now, except that the wild beasts would become bolder and more numerous and the animals that man has tamed or has made his companions would become wild or would be destroyed by enemies of their own kind.

In such a world, no more progress of the sort that seems progress to us would be possible. Animals would not build cities or make inventions or use telephones or trains or ships. There would still be such primitive methods of living as animals The races of animals would still keep up some such form of communication as they now seem to have. Cats, for example, look much alike, no matter what their breed, yet they know each other and have

use.

their quarrels and their methods of getting on with each other. Dogs differ from each other in appearance more than most other animals, yet dogs of every kind recognize each other and have some means of communication. But no coöperation, working together for a safer and happier mode of living, comes from this faint sense of relationship that members of an animal-race feel for one another.

One reason for this failure is that the imagination and memory of animals are very small. We have no evidence that the beauty of Nature-a vista in a forest or the grandeur of mountains or the tang of the salt spray-produces any effect on the animals that look upon or hear or feel Nature's wonders. Many of them have, to be sure, primitive ways of expressing their satisfaction over a good meal or a warm, sunny spot, or their discomfort when they are hurt or are deprived of something that they

want.

Birds seem to enjoy the music they make, and a great poet once said that it was his faith that every flower enjoys the air it breathes. But so far as we know, all the reactions of animals to what goes on about them are confined to the moment and are of the simplest kind. They know nothing of distant lands, unless they belong to animal races that migrate from place to place in search of food or in order to escape extreme cold or extreme heat. They have no records of their past history -no books or poems or permanent records of any kind. If mankind were to disappear from the earth, the horse and the cow and the dog and all the tribes of animals domesticated by man, would soon forget that a strange superior animal, walking upright and having uncanny powers over them, had ever used them for his pleasure or his profit, had ever cared for them in sheds and barns when they were tired, or had ever killed them for his own food when he was hungry.

Man differs from the animals, then, chiefly in his power to ask questions of life and to get answers to his questions. He could project his thought more rapidly than he could walk, so he discovered means of transporting himself to places where he wanted to be. He used the ox and the horse to multiply his strength;

when these were found wanting, he invented machines that would carry him still more rapidly-the ship, the train of cars running on ribbons of steel, the automobile, the airplane. He was not satisfied with his power of communicating his thought to those of his fellows who were near by, so he discovered how to send his voice over thousands of miles by the aid of a slender wire, and then how to send it without even the wire. He communicated his thoughts by a system of sounds that he developed with great precision, and then by representing these sounds on various materials-stone, bark, paper made of reeds, later on fabrics of finer qualities. He represented his ideas of the beauty of Nature by pictures that he drew on stone, or on canvas; at length he discovered how to send his pictures through space by telephone. He lived in huts or caves, then in tents that he could carry about with him, still later, if he desired, in houses that could fly with incredible speed on rails. In order to increase his powers he enlarged his group of associates, which at first was like the group of animals, so that thousands, even millions, of his kind could live within a small area in buildings not built on one level but on ten or twenty or fifty levels. And he kept records of his deeds, and of his thoughts, and of his ideas of the beauty of Nature and life, so that he could live in the past as well as in the present, and could learn from generations long dead.

Now all this may be summed up by saying that man is so constituted that he can reflect about the things that surround him. The reactions of animals are simple, are limited to the moment. Man seizes on what is of service to him, and can determine how to make this even more serviceable. He can project his mind into the world about him or into the past or the future, can see what he wishes to bring to pass, and can set about making it possible; or he can see what he wishes to preserve of the past for his present or future profit and enjoyment. He can live more lives than

one.

He multiplies himself in a thousand ways. He makes all things serve him. He explores the mysteries of Nature, the sources of life, and the causes of death.

And always he expresses his thoughts and his desires; in music, in art, in poetry. He is curious about himself, about Nature, about the stars and the waters and the depths of the earth, about his fellows, about the world before life came to it, about his soul and its fate, about the future of his race. He can bask in the sun after a good meal, just like any animal. Like an animal he will fight for food, for his young, to repel the stranger, to get into his possession things that he desires. But he can reflect on these things that he desires, or curb his desires when they are wicked. He lives according to his ideals of how a man should live, and multiplies his powers to enjoy the months and years during which he lives on the earth and partakes of its benefits.

One of the chief sources of man's power to raise his life above that of the brute beasts, who do not know their ancestry or their period of life and death, lies in his command of self-expression. He reflects about things, can communicate his thoughts to his fellows, can set down his ideas of beauty and right action. His life, like that of animals, is concerned with what goes on in his immediate presence, with food and shelter and comfort. But he not only has found out how to insure his food and his comfort to a higher degree than the animals; he has also found joys and powers that animals know nothing about. He finds enjoyment not only in his immediate surroundings, but in a world of fancy and imagination. He can forget the present, his weariness of the struggle for food and life, his sorrow-for his very superiority to animals in love and sense of beauty makes him more subject to suffering than the beasts-he can forget all that surrounds him, if he will, in a world of imagination into which he can pass instantly. The animal, confronted by a crisis, can draw on no inspiring past in which his race has triumphed, but must meet it for himself alone. But man finds new powers born in him from his knowledge of how his fellows in far distant ages met life's difficulties bravely, or rejoiced in its beauty, or had faith in the future of the soul. What is more, the animal knows no law of relationship besides the instinct of

parenthood and even this is lost after a time, while man has discovered not only enormous gains to be won through coöperation with his fellows but also the joy that such coöperation brings. He has enlarged his self, developed a wider personality, through sympathy and service, through the brotherhood of the race. And, finally, he has found a larger and deeper personality through reflecting on his relation to Nature and the world in which he lives. He has learned how to make Nature serve him; he has also felt the magic and the mystery of flower and star, of the tempestdriven sea, of the silent pageantry of the summer night and the canopy of stars.

II

Before we go any farther, suppose we stop for a moment to think over what we have just been speaking about.

We are apt to think that the age in which we live is the most marvelous in the history of man because people, or most of them, live so much more comfortably than in earlier times. In Shakespeare's England, to go no farther back, travel was slow and dangerous; houses were cold, badly lighted, inconvenient; terrible diseases devastated whole provinces. Yet great men lived then, and great things were done then. The point is that unless we are careful we shall be in danger of thinking that the greatness of man in this twentieth century consists merely in material comforts and enterprises. An office boy can use the telephone, travel on fast trains, run an automobile. Shakespeare knew nothing of these things, knew nothing of a thousand wonders that are commonplace to us. But does the office boy tower above Shakespeare because of these things?

The fact is that the most vital differences between men and animals consist in things quite apart from what we call the conveniences of modern life. These things are memory and imagination.

Through memory men make use of their own past experiences and of the past experiences of the race. This means not only that great deeds live on, great achievements for human welfare, the victories of the human spirit, but also that whatever of progress toward greater human comfort

and efficiency has been achieved by one generation becomes so much capital on which a new generation may build.

Through imagination men conceive new wants and find means for satisfying them. Both memory and imagination are the roots of progress.

When

John Milton studied the great achievements of men in earlier times, became inspired to write a poem that the world would not willingly let die, and through the power of his creative imagination brought his dream to reality. When the Norman hosts marched to battle a minstrel sang to them of the great deeds of Roland, Charlemagne's knight, so that all the soldiers were set on fire with the determination to perform valorous deeds. Galileo saw the swaying lights suspended from the ceiling of the church he conceived the idea of the pendulum, from which clocks came into being. The mind of Isaac Newton leaped from the observation of the fall of an apple to the formulation of the laws that control the universe. In all of these incidents, and in thousands like them, memory and imagination prove their power.

The same thing is true of all science and invention. For thousands of years plagues swept men off like flies. Whole regions of the earth were uninhabitable by white men. But typhoid and other fevers have been conquered. Men live as securely in India or in Panama as in the most highly civilized country. In the Grand Central Terminal in New York you may see the first train of cars to make regular trips on an American railway. It is interesting to compare the tiny engine with the mighty locomotive of today, and the little open carriage with the modern Pullman. Yet only a few years separate the "Rocket" and its carriage from the "Twentieth Century Limited." Men have won these, and thousands of other secrets from Nature through their ability to build on past experiences and to visualize the thing they wished to create.

Animals cannot do these things. Neither can the office boy, unless he is alive to what is at the basis of progress.

But the office boy has within him the hidden possibilities that may make him

one day a discoverer of new truth. He may become the head of a great business organization, or a great painter or dramatist, or a statesman able to bless mankind. He may be a source of comfort or strength to generations that will live a thousand years after he is dead. Even if such high destiny is not in store for him, he may so enrich his own life that he crowds into it experiences of past generations, experiences drawn from distant countries, contacts with all that the mind of man has accomplished, imaginations destined to raise him, and his descendants, to a higher scale of living.

Or, he may live the life of an animal.

III

What has all this to do with Literature and Life? To put it more definitely, what has it to do with your reading and study of this book?

Literature is one form of the expression of life. It is not the only form. Men express themselves in many ways: through the language they speak, the homes they live in, the cities and great industries which are the sources of their wealth and their means of existence. All that concerns the material part of life, therefore, is an expression of some of the ideals about life that men and women hold. It is not less true that some part of the meaning of life may find expression through a beautiful painting, or a statue, or a song. A story may sum up in a few hundred words an ideal that thousands of men would like to live by, or, if need be, to die for. A poem may sing itself into the heart of a regiment, or comfort those who are discouraged, or translate the beauty of birdsong or flower or of the setting sun into words that will never die. Literature is the expression of the meaning and beauty of life, and if men could not find in life beauty and meaning, they would not care to live.

In this book you will find illustrations of the way in which literature is related to life.

Many collections of literature are merely collections. They are like magazines. You may read here and there, paying attention only to what interests you, and with no thought of any relation between