POETRY AXD SCIENCE 43 



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POETEY AND SCIENCE: THE CASE OF 



CHAELES DAEWIN Hj/ 



Br EDWARD BRADFORD TITCHENER 



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IN the autobiographical chapter of the " Life and Letters of Charles 

 Darwin " occurs a well-known passage, in which the writer de- 

 plores his loss, in middle life, of the higher esthetic tastes. 



Up to the age of thirty, or beyond it, poetry of many kinds, such as the 

 works of Milton, Gray, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge and Shelley, gave me 

 great pleasure, and even as a schoolboy I took intense delight in Shakespeare, 

 especially in the historical plays. . . . But now for many years I can not endure 

 to read a line of poetry: I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it 

 so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. . . . This curious and lamentable loss 

 of the higher esthetic tastes is all the odder, as books on history, biographies, 

 and travels (independently of any scientific facts which they may contain), 

 and essays ou all sorts of subjects interest me as much as ever they did. My 

 mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of 

 large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that 

 part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I can not conceive, 

 A man with a mind more highly organized or better constituted than mine 

 would not, I suppose, have thus suiTered; and if I had to live my life again, 

 I would have made a rule to read some poetry ... at least once every week; 

 for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept 

 active through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may 

 possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, 

 by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature. 



The loss which Darwin here regrets has often been charged to the 

 particular account of his occupation with science. I have always 

 believed that the charge is unfounded. It is difficult to give precise 

 reasons, to translate into words what is, at bottom, a matter of general 

 cumulative impression; but I shall attempt to show that there are, at 

 any rate, plausible grounds for doubting the common construction put 

 upon his remarks. 



I must begin by saying that there is no real evidence to the effect 

 that Darwin showed, at any period of his life, a deep feeling for 

 poetry, or a profound understanding of it. I use the adjectives advis- 

 edly. The true love of poetry, and the intimate understanding of 

 poetry, are matters primarily of a man's temperament. But they are 

 also, like ever^^thing else that is worth while, largely — much more 

 largely than is ordinarily supposed — matters of teclmique, of long and 

 studious apprenticeship. Temperament and training, then, must go 



