man of letters is free to take these for his own and to bend them to his
purpose. Ibsen has found in the doctrine of heredity a modern analog of
the ancient Greek idea of fate; and altho he may not "see life steadily
and see it whole," he has been enabled to invest his somber 'Ghosts'
with not a little of the inerrable inevitability which we feel to be so
appalling in the master work of Sophocles. Criticism, no less than
creation, has been stimulated by scientific hypothesis; and for one
thing, the conception of literary history has been wholly transformed
since the theory of evolution was declared. To M. Brunetière we owe the
application of this doctrine to the development of the drama in his own
language. He has shown us most convincingly how the several literary
forms,--the lyric, the oration, the epic, with its illegitimate
descendant, the modern novel in prose,--may cross-fertilize each other
from time to time, and also how the casual hybrids that result are ever
struggling to revert each to its own species.

Science is thus seen to be stimulating to art; but the "use of the
scientific method" would seem to be more than stimulation only. It leads
the practitioners of the several arts to set up an ideal of
disinterestedness, inspired by a lofty curiosity, which shall scorn
nothing as insignificant, and which is ever eager after knowledge
ascertained for its own sake. As it abhors the abnormal and the
freakish, the superficial and the extravagant, it helps the creative
artist to strive for a more classic directness and simplicity; and it
guides the critic toward passionless proportion and moderation. Altho it
tends toward intellectual freedom, it forces us always to recognize the
reign of law. It establishes the strength of the social bond, and
thereby, for example, it aids us to see that, altho romance is ever
young and ever true, what is known as "neo-romanticism," with its
reckless assertion of individual whim, is anti-social, and therefore