NATURAL SCIENCE IN A LITERARY EDUCATION. 99 



The literature of an age takes up into itself tlie whole mental 

 life of the time. He who would adequately interpret modern 

 literature should know modern life, and in that life science is a 

 marked element. A general knowledge of contemporary science 

 is needed to interpret contemporary literature. Tennyson, for 

 example, constantly refers to the great scientific discoveries and 

 conceptions of his time. How shall a reader ignorant of those 

 conceptions fully appreciate him ? Prof. William H. Hudson, in 

 a remarkable article,* speaks of "Tennyson's keen interest in 

 science ; his sympathetic hold upon the vast movements in prog- 

 ress around him ; his manly attitude toward the changes that life 

 and thought were everywhere undergoing." Even the casual 

 reader of Tennyson must have noted how deep is his interest in 

 scientific study, and how fully the great conceptions of modern 

 science find expression in his poetry. Indeed, there seems to be a 

 prophetic element in this. As Miss Scudder notes in her recent 

 volume,t it is hard to realize in reading some parts of In Memo- 

 riam that it was published in 1850, nine years before Darwin's 

 Origin of Species. 



Great forms of thought, mighty molds which of necessity give 

 shape to our thinking and then to our very imaginings — these 

 come to us from the study of things, not from the study of lan- 

 guage. Literature itself must largely find its raw material, its 

 great metaphors and similes, its vivid pictures and mighty sym- 

 bols, within the domain of natural science, and this increasingly 

 as the years go by. The chemist's law of definite and multiple 

 proportions ; the laws of motion ; the phenomena and laws of 

 light, heat, and electricity ; the strata, the glaciers, and the pro- 

 cesses of earth-sculpture of the geologist ; the winds, tides, and 

 ocean currents ; the theories of animal evolution ; the struggle 

 for existence, the survival of the fittest ; the mighty phenomena, 

 the impressive uniformities, the nebular hypothesis of astronomy 

 — these are great forms of thought as well as facts and theories of 

 science. A man who is unacquainted with modern science can 

 not well understand the language of educated men, and he can 

 not interpret sympathetically and adequately the literature of his 

 own day. Were any writer completely ignorant of these facts 

 and conceptions, he would be unable to make use of some of the 

 most powerful symbols that exist for the expression of ideas. 

 Standing in the midst of a mighty speaking universe, he would 

 find himself, in a measure, tongue-tied because deaf. 



Prof. Drummond's suggestive book, Natural Law in the Spir- 

 itual World, shows what powerful instruments science furnishes 



* Poetry and Science, Popular Science Monthly, October, 1894. 

 \ The Life of the Spirit in the Modern English Poets. 



