128 Mr. H. Beerbohm Tree on the Imaginative Faculty. [May 26, 



currents springing from one parent source. The greatest victories 

 which mind has achieved over matter have been due to the soaring 

 flights of the imagination rather than to a mere crawling research 

 along the surface of facts. This hall, where Faraday, Huxley, and 

 Tyndall have spoken, has witnessed displays of the imagination equal 

 to those of the highest poetry. As the diver dives for pearls into the 

 depths of the sea, so does science project itself on the wings of the 

 imagination into the mists which shroud the vast unexplained, 

 snatching in its flight the secrets which solve the mysteries of the 

 universe, and which point out to mankind the invisible stepping- 

 stones connecting the known with the unknown. 



It was in this hall that Professor Dewar summoned the elusive 

 and invisible atmosphere, which since all time has enveloped the 

 earth, and with the wand of science compelled it to appear before 

 you in a palpable and visible form. Even so does the imagination 

 distil from the elemental ether of thought and truth the liquid air of 

 art. I have endeavoured to show that, just as the highest achieve- 

 ment of science is that which we owe to the imagination, so also is 

 the highest achievement of art that which carries us out of the sordid 

 surroundings of every-day life into the realms of idealised truth. Its 

 loftiest mission is to preserve for us, amid the din and clash of life, 

 those illusions which are its better part — to epitomise for us the as- 

 pirations of mankind, to stifle its sobs, to nurse its wounds, to requite 

 its unrequited love, to sing its lullaby of death. It is the unwept 

 tear of the criminal, it is the ode of the agnostic to immortality, it is 

 the toy of childhood, the fairyland of the mature, and gilds old age 

 with the afterglow of youth. 



[H. B. T.] 



