[There is] one distinctly ...

[There is] one distinctly human thing - the story. There can be as good science about a turnip as about a man. ... [Or philosophy, or theology] ...There can be, without any question at all, as good higher mathematics about a turnip as about a man. But I do not think, though I speak in a manner somewhat tentative, that there could be as good a novel written about a turnip as a man.
[There is] one distinctly human thing - the story. There can be as good science about a turnip as about a man. ... [Or philosophy, or theology] ...There can be, without any question at all, as good higher mathematics about a turnip as about a man. But I do not think, though I speak in a manner somewhat tentative, that there could be as good a novel written about a turnip as a man.

Quotes from the same author

Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers. In the perfect stranger we perceive man himself; the image of a God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of wisdom of a mustache.
A change of opinions is almost unknown in an elderly military man.
Men reform a thing by removing the reality from it, and then do not know what to do with the unreality that is left.
The power which makes a man able to entertain a good impulse is the same as that which enables him to make a good gun; it is imagination.
The doctrine of human equality reposes on this: that there is no man really clever who has not found that he is stupid.