IN THE NOON OF SCIENCE 



tion of ignorance; that of knowledge is often the 

 emotion of joy and faith, that of ignorance is often 

 the emotion of fear and superstition. It would be 

 absurd to say that men of science experienced no 

 emotion; only it is not the emotion of sentiment, it 

 is not usually the emotion of awe or reverence. It 

 is the joy of discovery, the intellectual delight in 

 the solution of new problems. Evidently the great 

 biologist like Darwin is thrilled by the discovery 

 of a biological law as is the poet by his happy in- 

 spirations. Think you Darwin's conception of 

 natural selection and the descent of man required 

 no imagination? Darwin's mind had not atrophied; 

 his desire to know had outgrown his desire to feel. 

 There is the enjoyment of knowledge and there 

 is the enjoyment of beauty. 



Science rarely antagonizes poetry; it takes the 

 other road. The world has got to a point, no doubt, 

 where it sets a greater store by knowing than by 

 feeling, by knowledge than by sentiment; hence 

 poetry is in the decline. The pleasures of the under- 

 standing are more to us than the pleasures of the 

 imagination. 



Science has its mysteries, but they do not awaken 

 our emotions; it has its revelation, but it does not 

 touch our religious sentiments; it has its beauty, 

 but it is not the beauty that so moves us in wild, 

 free nature; rather is it the beauty of the con- 

 structed, the artificial, or the beauty of machinery. 

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