SCIENCE AND MODERN POETRY 749 



almost become a part of our mental constitution ; it has become 

 one of the presuppositions which the human mind carries with 

 it in its onward march. We can scarcely imagine the intel- 

 lectual outlook of people, including the poets, who lived before 

 the inception of this idea. We have to imagine an intellectual 

 atmosphere in which the law of the uniformity of Nature and 

 the law of universal causation were only accepted to a very 

 limited degree. Law itself was hardly more than partially 

 recognised. Theories of the special creation of species held 

 general sway, and immutability, rather than mutability, was 

 regarded as their main characteristic. In man the idea of 

 development, of social and intellectual progress, was of academic 

 rather than of practical interest. Many, indeed, believed that 

 retrogression had set in ; that the highest attainment of 

 humanity had occurred in some Golden Age of the past. If 

 there was any social progress at all it was looked upon as the 

 result of an artificial social machinery ; the idea that that social 

 machinery itself was the result of a natural development of the 

 race was only dimly perceived, if at all. Evolution changed all 

 this. Society must be regarded as continuous from age to 

 age — it is an organism, not a manufacture. The idea of the 

 individual being " the heir of all the ages " was seen to be 

 merely the expression of a fact. Moreover, the philosophy of 

 development is essentially a hopeful one— it finds for a large 

 amount of pain and evil a place and a significance more satis- 

 factory to the reason than most of the arbitrary theological 

 explanations of previous generations, and affords a natural 

 incentive to moral effort. 



Of all modern poets Tennyson was the one who perhaps 

 made most use of this conception, 1 though all were under its 

 influence. In fact Tennyson's principal point of contact with 

 science was his acceptance of evolution as a fact. All his philoso- 

 phical and nature poetry is written from this point of view. His 

 most emphatic references to evolution are in the two poems 

 Locksley Hall and its sequel. In Maud too we find it — 



He (man) felt himself in his force to be Nature's crowning race. 

 As nine months go to the shaping an infant ripe for his birth, 

 So many a million of ages have gone for the making of man ; 

 He now is first, but is he the last ? is he not too base ? 



1 For a more extended treatment of this part of the subject see Mr. Master- 

 man's book on Tennyson, to which I must acknowledge my indebtedness. 



