574 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the first kind. Before the stars, the winds, the trees and plants, could 

 be grasped scientifically, and the laws which govern them studied, 

 they had been grasped, and as it were appropriated, by the human 

 mind experimentally and imaginatively. The latter kind of knowl- 

 edge was in some respects better than the foi-mer. It was more inti- 

 mate and realized, so that, as far as it was true, it was more available. 

 For practical purposes, accurate scientific knowledge of a thing is 

 seldom sufiicient. To obtain complete practical command over it you 

 must take possession of it with the imagination and feelings as well as 

 the reason, and it will often happen that this imaginative knowledge, 

 helped very slightly by scientific knowledge, carries a man practi- 

 cally further than a very perfect scientific knowledge by itself. Wit- 

 ness the instinctive, as we say, and unanalyzable skill sometimes 

 possessed by savages. Moreover, this kind of knowledge is more 

 attractive and interesting, and so has a more powerful modifying 

 influence upon its possessor, than the other kind, for the simple 

 reason that it takes hold of the most plastic side of his nature. 

 But just because it is so fascinating, and is at the same time not by 

 itself trustworthy, it has certain mischievous consequences when it 

 comes, as it generally does, first. Then it fills the mind with preju- 

 dices, hasty misconceptions, which, seizing upon the imagination, are 

 stereotyped in the form of superstitions ; and these sometimes exercise 

 by themselves a most pernicious influence, and in any case close the 

 mind against the entrance of the sounder scientific knowledge. When 

 this imaginative medley of observation and prejudice has long had 

 possession, science arrives. Then follows a contest between the two 

 kinds of knowledge, in which the human being suffers much. Truth 

 cannot in the long-run be resisted, and so, after whatever defense, the 

 fo-rtress is carried and the phantom garrison of superstition is driven 

 out. The mind passes now under a new set of impressions, and places 

 itself in a new relation to the universe. Its victory over superstition 

 has been won by placing a careful restraint upon imagination and 

 feeling. In order not to be misled by feeling, it has been forced arti- 

 ficially to deaden feeling ; lest the judgment should be overwhelmed 

 by the impressiveness of the universe, it arms itself with callousness ; 

 it turns away from Nature the mobile side, and receives the shock 

 upon the adamantine shield of the skeptical reason. In this way it 

 substitutes one imperfect kind of knowledge for another. Before, it 

 realized strongly, if that expression is clear, but scarcely analyzed at 

 all ; now, it analyzes most rigidly, but ceases in turn to realize. As the 

 victory of the scientific spirit becomes more and more decided, there 

 passes a deep shudder of discomfort through the whole world of those 

 whose business is with realizing, and not with testing, knowledge. Reli- 

 gion is struck first, because the whole work of realizing presupposes 

 faith, and yet, as the testing process comes late, faith is almost always 

 more or less premature. But poetry and art suflTer in their turn. How 



