entered imaginatively into the feelings and fate of a creature different
from himself, he has taken his first step out into the wide world of the
lives of others.

[Footnote 1: See _Raggylug_, page 135.]

It may be a recognition of this factor and its value which has led so many
writers of nature stories into the error of over-humanising their
four-footed or feathered heroes and heroines. The exaggeration is
unnecessary, for there is enough community of lot suggested in the
sternest scientific record to constitute a natural basis for sympathy on
the part of the human animal. Without any falsity of presentation
whatever, the nature story may be counted on as a help in the beginnings
of culture of the sympathies. It is not, of course, a help confined to the
powers of the nature story; all types of story share in some degree the
powers of each. But each has some especial virtue in dominant degree, and
the nature story is, on this ground, identified with the thought given.

The nature story shares its influence especially with

THE HISTORICAL STORY

As the one widens the circle of connection with other kinds of life, the
other deepens the sense of relation to past lives; it gives the sense of
background, of the close and endless connection of generation with
generation. A good historical story vitalises the conception of past
events and brings their characters into relation with the present. This is
especially true of stories of things and persons in the history of our own
race. They foster race-consciousness, the feeling of kinship and community
of blood. It is this property which makes the historical story so good an