362 LEISURE-TIME STUDIES. 



and in my turn I propose to deal with but one special phase 

 of the relations of poetry to nature, that phase being the 

 exact explanation of nature and natural phenomena we 

 ordinarily and collectively name " Science." 



Once again, let us turn to the volume under discussion 

 for a succinct summary of the differences which are usually 

 held to separate the poetic from the scientific interpretation 

 of nature. " The same external Nature," says Principal 

 Shairp, " which poetry works on supplies the staple or raw 

 material with which all the Physical Sciences deal, and which 

 they endeavour to reduce to exact knowledge, subduing 

 apparent confusion and multiplicity into unity, law, and 

 order. Each of the Physical Sciences attempts to explain 

 the outward world in one of its aspects, to interpret it 

 from one point of view. And the whole circle of the 

 Physical Sciences, or Physical Science in its widest extent, 

 confines itself to explaining the appearances of the material 

 world by the properties of matter, and to reducing what 

 is complex and manifold to the operation of a few simple 

 but all-pervading laws. But besides those aspects of Nature 

 which Physical Science explains, over and above those laws 

 which the Sciences discover, there are other sides or aspects 

 of Nature which come to us through other than scientific 

 avenues, and which, when they do reach us, bring home to 

 us new truth, and raise us to noble contemplations. This 

 ordered array of material appearances, these marshalled 

 lines of Nature's sequences, wonderful and beautiful though 

 they be, are not in themselves all. No reasonable being 

 can rest in them. Inevitably he is carried out of and 

 beyond these, to other inquiries which no Physics can 

 answer : How stand these phenomena to the thinking mind 

 and feeling heart which contemplates them ? how came 

 they to be as they are ? are they there of themselves, or is 

 there a Higher Centre from which they proceed ? what 

 is their origin? what the goal toward which they travel? 

 Inquiries such as these, which are the genuine product of 

 Reason, lead us for their answer not to the Physics of the 



