SCIENCE AND MODERN POETRY 743 



Spencer under their arms ; or if they have Tennyson, Longfellow, 

 or Morris, read them in the light of Spectrum Analysis or test 

 them by the economics of Mill and Bain." Such a conflict, 

 however inevitable, was necessarily short-lived. Many of the 

 greater minds of the time regretted it and looked forward to the 

 day when reconciliation should come and " so far from being 

 unfriendly to the poetic imagination, science will breathe into it 

 a higher exaltation." The poets themselves recognised the 

 necessity of the struggle, while looking forward with calmness, 

 serenity, and certain hope to reconciliation and mutual help. 

 The poets' feelings did not belie them — we are growing to 

 recognise the fact that poetry is largely the expression of 

 thoughts, ideas, feelings, many of which are founded and 

 generated by science. The essays of Tyndall and Huxley are, 

 the question of form apart, poems in themselves ; and there are 

 both philosophers and poets who feel that no absolute antagon- 

 ism can exist between them. The mission of science is to 

 struggle against the unknown ; while in letters it is enough to 

 give an expression, and in art a body, to the conceptions of the 

 mind or the beauties of Nature. In other words, science kindles 

 the imagination with new conceptions and new beauties which 

 it has wrested from the unknown, and thus becomes the ally of 

 poetry. 



On the other hand, although, as has been pointed out, science 

 is the ally of poetry, it must not be forgotten that poetry is, in no 

 less real a sense, the ally of science. The intuition of the poet 

 often anticipates scientific discoveries ; we see this in fiction in 

 the novels of Victor Hugo, Jules Verne, and in those of H. G. 

 Wells. In poetry a single example will suffice: when the theory 

 of Evolution had been definitely established in science it was 

 regarded merely as the process by which man and the Universe 

 in general had arrived at their present condition, and inferences 

 from it with regard to the future were put forward in a purely 

 tentative manner, merely as suggestions containing perhaps a 

 certain amount of speculative interest. The poet, however, with 

 his prophetic insight seized on the theory and pushed it at once 

 to its logical conclusion ; he 



Dipt into the future far as human eye could see ; 



Saw the vision of the world and all the wonder that would be ; 



and many of his speculations are now accepted as beliefs by men 

 of science, if not as scientists at any rate as thinkers. 

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