This negative criticism of preconceived notions and speculations about human nature prepared the way for disinterested observation and comparison. Certain modern tendencies and movements gave an impetus to the detached study of human behavior. The ethnologists collected objective descriptions of the behavior of primitive people. In psychology interest developed in the study of the child and in the comparative study of human and animal behavior. The psychiatrist, in dealing with certain types of abnormal behavior like hysteria and multiple personality, was forced to study human behavior objectively. All this has prepared the way for a science of human nature and of society based upon objective and disinterested observation. 2. Literature and the Science of Human Nature The poets were the first to recognize that "the proper study of mankind is man" as they were also the first to interpret it objectively. The description and appreciation of human nature and personality by the poet and artist preceded systematic and reflective analysis by the psychologist and the sociologist. In recent years, moreover, there has been a very conscious effort to make literature, as well as history, "scientific." Georg Brandes in his _Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature_ set himself the task to "trace first and foremost the connection between literature and life." Taine's _History of English Literature_ attempts to delineate British temperament and character as mirrored in literary masterpieces. The novel which emphasizes "_milieu_" and "character," as contrasted with the novel which emphasizes "action" and "plot," is a literary device for the analysis of human nature and society. Émile Zola in an essay _The Experimental Novel_ has presented with characteristic audacity the case for works of fiction as instruments for the scientific dissection and explanation of human behavior.