232 False Antitheses 



of our discourse. Perhaps psychologists might have 

 proved the fairies an illusion, but we, as naturalists, 

 had no objection to offer. Our dominant feeling, as 

 a matter of fact, was envy. But had the poet pro- 

 ceeded to explain that the manufacture of nectar in 

 the honeysuckle was entirely a matter of fairies' 

 distilling, we should have been up in arms at once. 

 We should have pointed to the naturalistic "Notice 

 to Trespassers: No fairies allowed to encamp here." 

 But the poet was much too wise to mix his concepts. 

 He did not offer us the alternative — botany or fairies. 

 The question was botany plus fairies (guaranteed 

 not to meddle) or botany alone. Perhaps the question 

 was really in regard to what Robert Bridges has 

 called "the necessity of poetry." 



The point of the analogy will break if it is pressed, 

 and we have not ourselves found the right-of-way to 

 fairyland; but what we wish to suggest is that our 

 poet was wiser in his generation than some children 

 of greater light. For he did not obtrude his fairies 

 into our science. Nor did he argue about their reality ; 

 he accepted them with "natural piety" ; and he con- 

 trived to make one feel that one was missing some- 

 thing. 



Similarly, there is no alternative — "God or Dar- 

 winism"; no alternative — "Man as child of God or 

 man as highest mammal"; no alternative — "divine 

 creation or cosmic evolution." For all these express 

 confusion of thought. The alternative is — "Science 

 only or science and the vision of God." 



Apart from the fact that the evolutionist conclu- 



