SCIENCE AND POETRY 173 



found them insufferably dull. On the other hand, he experienced great 

 delight in reading novels, or in having them read to him, if they did 

 not end unhappily, " against which a law should be passed." Many 

 scientists, however, have held a different attitude toward poetry. J. S. 

 Mill, although not a scientist in the strict meaning of the term, pos- 

 sessed a severely logical mind. When his premises were correct his 

 conclusions have rarely been called in question. In his autobiography 

 he says, when speaking of Wordsworth : 



What made his poems a medicine for my state of mind was that they ex- 

 pressed not mere outward beauty, but states of feeling and thought colored by 

 feeling, under the excitement of beauty. I needed to be made to feel that there 

 was real permanent happiness in tranquil contemplation. Wordsworth taught me 

 this, not only without turning away from, but with greatly increased interest in 

 the common feelings and common destiny of human beings. 



Quite as remarkable both for what it was as for what it was not was 

 the mind of William E. Gladstone. He is said to have been the only 

 English statesman who could make a speech in Parliament two or three 

 hours long crammed with statistics and bristling with figures yet hold 

 the attention of his auditors to the end. Some of his contributions to 

 the history of ancient Greece are considered to be of lasting value. 

 On the other hand, in his controversies with Huxley and in his theolog- 

 ical writings generally he displays such short-sightedness and such an 

 obliquity of intellectual vision that the reader is sometimes prompted 

 to ask himself whether Gladstone the statesman and Gladstone the 

 theologian are the same person. Horace observed long ago that you 

 might drive out nature by violent means, but it would always re- 

 turn. Although Darwin's mind seemed to be almost pure intellect, 

 he was a man of "kindly disposition, of strong feelings and wide sym- 

 pathies. Many anecd »tes are told of the ways by which his grand- 

 children tyrannized over him. Herbert Spencer was unable to sup- 

 press feelings of indignation when he witnessed an act of cruel ty. He 

 was powerless to explain this emotional state of mind and admitted that 

 he could not help it. It is not putting the case too strong to say that 

 every forward step in the march of human progress has been due to the 

 constructive or creative imagination. In the man of routine it is very 

 feeble, so feeble that it can hardly be said to exist. Columbus imagined 

 the existence of a continent at some distance westward from the Atlantic 

 coast as he knew it because he saw on the shores of Portugal branches 

 of trees, two human corpses and other objects which he was convinced 

 were not of European provenience. Many other persons had seen sim- 

 ilar objects before him; but they did not set the imagination of the 

 observers to work. In addition he had doubtless read the views of the 

 Greeks as feebly reflected in a few Eoman authors affirming that the 

 earth is a sphere. Had his imagination been of the fanciful order he 



