GOETHE'S 'FAKBENLEHRE.' 77 



preached Nature were radically different, but they 

 had an equal warrant in the constitution of man. As 

 regards our tastes and tendencies, our pleasures and 

 pains, physical and mental, our action and passion, our 

 sorrows, sympathies, and joys, we are the heirs of all 

 the ages that preceded us ; and of the human nature 

 thus handed down poetry is an element just as much 

 as science. The emotions of man are older than his 

 understanding, and the poet who brightens, purifies, 

 and exalts these emotions may claim a position in the 

 world at least as high and as well assured as that of 

 the man of science. They minister to different but to 

 equally permanent needs of human nature ; and the 

 incompleteness of which I complain consists in the 

 endeavour on the part of either to exclude the other. 

 There is no fear that the man of science can ever 

 destroy the glory of the lilies of the field ; there is no 

 hope that the poet can ever successfully contend against 

 our right to examine, in accordance with scientific 

 method, the agent to which the lily owes its glory. 

 There is no necessary encroachment of the one field 

 upon the other. Nature embraces them both, and 

 man, when he is complete, will exhibit as large a 

 toleration. 



