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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



whose contact with reality was neces- 

 sarily slight, catches at the problems of 

 nineteenth century feeling. Tennyson, 

 as all men know, gave us poetry that 

 was inwrought of the latest word of 

 science, the last aspiration of religious 

 hope, the newest sure conclusion in the 

 field of social endeavor for the better- 

 ment of man. 



And Tennyson in "In Memoriam," as 

 Browning in "Paracelsus" and Lowell in 

 "The Cathedral," has taught us that 

 abstract truth may be made into poetry 

 and that of the loftiest and most vital- 

 izing kind. And to such poetry the 

 world is ready to give a willing ear, 

 though it will not be satisfied with the 

 mere tricking out in rhyme and meter 

 of scientific truth. The difficulty for 

 the poet to-day is not merely that of 

 new knowledge, but that of a science 

 advancing so rapidly that the poet, 

 whose art is meditative, can hardly avail 

 himself of its latest revelations before 

 their significance has vanished in the 

 light of some new and revolutionary dis- 

 covery announced from some investiga- 

 tor's laboratory. This is so new a thing 

 that literary conditions have not yet. 

 been adjusted to it, as we may fairly 

 hope that they will be some time in the 

 not distant future. 



A thing, almost if not quite, as dis- 

 tinctive of our time as the progress of 

 scientific discovery is the growth of the 

 democratic spirit. This latter has been 

 a thing of common observation for over 

 a century, and about that long ago 

 Wordsworth and Shelley, Burns and 

 Byron voiced with glowing enthusiasm 

 the new revolutionary gospel. Since 

 then it has been the theme of other pens 

 and has become a matter of common- 

 place, and yet, though it has not lost 

 interest because of the fulfilment of the 

 hopes of man, it is not now a vital 

 force in literature of the better class. 

 The reason for this is, perhaps, not far 

 to seek. In the domain of politics the 

 advance in thought and feeling from a 

 hundred years ago is a matter of no 

 great moment. The poet who would 

 voice for the world a message of broth- 



erhood, thrilled with the spirit of a new 

 humanity, inevitably finds himself hark- 

 ing back; he is compelled to repeat the 

 sentiments of Mrs. Browning's perfervid 

 Italian poems, or Whittier's simple 

 songs, or Shelley's vague theorizing: he 

 ceases to be individual. Under present 

 conditions, strenuously vocal as the 

 world is with the voices of those trying 

 to be heard, failure to be distinctly and 

 positively individual is failure to gain 

 attention. 



And it is significant that we are ap- 

 proaching the solution of social prob- 

 lems in the scientific way. The devel- 

 opment of a better state of society is to 

 come about, as we now realize, through 

 the operation of natural laws, and not 

 by the sensational process of awaken- 

 ing in the hearts of men a flashing en- 

 thusiasm for new forms of government. 



Benjamin Kidd's 'Social Evolution' 

 indicates quite clearly the new point of 

 view from which all problems of society 

 are to be considered, and perhaps, not 

 less remarkable for a like significance is 

 Henry Drummond's 'Ascent of Man.' 

 As the laboratory gives up its secrets, 

 as the mysteries of biology and pro- 

 cesses of growth in the organic world 

 become less mysterious, we are ap- 

 proaching nearer and nearer to a knowl- 

 edge of the laws that are concerned in 

 all growth, whether of the star fish or 

 of the modern state. Assuming that 

 man is the most vitally concerned in the 

 organization of society here in this pres- 

 ent world, and with the problem of an- 

 other world, whether real or imaginary, 

 whether a perfect state, or state of 

 growth as that of earth, one cannot 

 escape the reflection that both these 

 problems have become in a measure 

 problems of science, rather than prob- 

 lems of intuition or authority or emo- 

 tional susceptibility. 



And when science has come so close 

 to all the inmost convictions and aspi- 

 rations of man, there must follow a 

 poetry of science, fuller, richer, more vi- 

 talizing and more enduring than any 

 that has gone before it. It will appeal 

 to a nobler and loftier sense of beauty, a 



