POETS AND EVIDENCE ii 



upon earth ' ; and, again, as Herbert Spencer remarks, 

 * Music arouses dormant sentiments of which we had 

 not conceived the possibility, and do not know the 

 meaning ' ; or, as Richter says, ' tells us of things we 

 have not seen and shall not see.' " I have little 

 doubt myself that the feelings to which we owe our 

 famous ode, and those which were aroused by music 

 in the breast of Jean Paul and the Chinese annalist, 

 were all much of the same kind, and due to the 

 same fundamental cause. We may, indeed, say with 

 Wordsworth that the soul " cometh from afar," but 

 what world is more afar than that of long past time, 

 which we may, yet, dimly carry about with us in our 

 own ancestral memories ? 



There is, I believe, no falser view than that which 

 looks upon the poet as a teacher, if we mean by this 

 that he leads along the path of growing knowledge ; 

 that he, for instance, and not Newton, gets first at 

 the law of gravitation, and so forth. If he ever 

 does, it is by a chance combination, merely, and not 

 as a poet that he achieves this ; but, as a rule, poets 

 only catch up the ideas of the age and present them 

 grandly and attractively. 



" A monstrous eft was, of old, the Lord and 

 Master of Earth," &c. 



Yet this very ode of Wordsworth " on intimations 

 of immortality," has been quoted by Sir Oliver Lodge 

 in his Presidential Address to the Society for Psychical 

 Research,^ as though it were evidential. I cannot 

 understand this. Surely a feeling that a thing is, is 

 not, in itself, evidence that it is — and, if not, how 

 does the beauty and strength of the language 

 1 As reported in " Proceedings," March 1902. Part xliii. 



