65 



That is a fine passage in one of George Eliot's poems where she 

 contrasts our miserable aims that end in self, with the "thoughts 

 sublime of the immortal dead which pierce the night like stars." 



Says that rugged genius Walt Whitman, " of all mankind the 

 great poet is the equable man ; he bestows on every object or 

 quality its fit proportions, neither more nor less. He is the 

 equaliser of his age and land ; he is the arbiter ot the diverse, 

 and the key." He shows that objects gross (or material) and 

 the unseen soul are one, and that in the daily routine of a 

 trader's hfe are realities and are poems, " the development good, 

 all themes and hmts." 



The study of science must not be depreciated. To many 

 business men, however, the study of science in their leisure 

 hours would probably resolve itself into the investigation of 

 some particular branch likely to be useful to them in their daily 

 work. Thus it would not adequately fulfil the mission claimed 

 for literature. Again, science is constantly shifting, the para- 

 doxes of yesterday become the commonplaces of to-day, what is 

 held most tenaciously now may be proved to be altogether wrong 

 a few months hence. But Literature is permanent, "panting 

 time toils after it in vain," it is ever fresh and vernal. Its 

 lessons never lose their power. Its grand prevailing element is 

 repose. Imaginative poetry supplies a link in the chain of 

 human thought which exact science could never furnish. The 

 two studies are not antagonistic, they may exist side by side, 

 each useful in its respective sphere. The man who has turned 

 to that unfailing resource of strenuous idleness the collection of 

 statistics, may exercise his mathematical powers in solving the 

 problem of the day — the great equation of Shakespeare, Bacon, 

 Donnelly, and the unknown quantity. Literature often interests 

 the reader of it in science, and throws light on its study. (Instance 

 given — " barbaric pearl.") Many times has science proved the 

 handmaid of literature, and great benefits have accrued both to art 

 and science from the happy combination. If asked the question 

 sometimes propounded which is the more useful, literature or 

 science, the aiiswer would be that while the latter is of more 

 service to the community, literature is more beneficial to the 

 individual. The best safeguard for the scientific student against 

 the ever dwindling area of his own scientific research is some 

 kind of literary discipline — at once minute and generous — a dis- 

 cipline which shall steep his mind in the atmosphere of great 

 poets or great thinkers, and teach him to apprehend many of 

 those finer shades of expression in which one great writer differs 

 from another, and so marks the limit of his elevation, his 

 humour, or his dramatic force. Huxley points out how prolific 

 is the growth of the minutest branches of almost aU the sciences, 

 so that a scientist who has devoted his life to but one section of 



