SCIENCE AND POETRY 175 



the guidance of science than in the preceding two thousand without it. 

 The imagination is the force that impels the scientist to seek new and 

 hitherto unexplored regions in the vast domain of nature; but unless it 

 is guided and controlled by the intellect it rarely leads to anything 

 worth while. 



Perhaps, however, the circumstance that our generation devours 

 enormous quantities of fiction should not be taken as evidence that 

 there is comparatively little thinking. Mental effort is largely ex- 

 pended along practical lines. Such problems as the existence of God, 

 the priority of mind or matter, whether moral ideas are intuitional or 

 evolutionary, metaphysical monism or dualism, together with a host of 

 others on which philosophers were wont to expend their intellectual 

 energies for more than two thousand years are now generally regarded 

 as impossible of solution and are ignored. The world concerns itself 

 little about transcendental questions and is turning with increasing 

 interest to the consideration of matters that lie within its reach. 

 Everybody now admits that the noumena of the cosmos are undiscover- 

 able; the use to which the visible and tangible phenomena about us 

 determines our moral and physical welfare and our mundane happiness 

 as a whole. 



