THE SUMMIT OF THE YEARS 



shone like a holy crusader in following the Darwin- 

 ian banner into the territory of the unbelievers. 



v 



One may question, after all, whether this oppres- 

 sion which our sensitive souls feel in the presence 

 of the results of modern science be the fault of sci- 

 ence or of our own lack of a certain mental robust- 

 ness, or spiritual joy and vigor, that enables one to 

 transmute and spiritualize science. Let us take 

 courage from the examples of some of the great 

 modern poets. Tennyson drew material, if not in- 

 spiration, from the two great physical sciences geol- 

 ogy and astronomy, especially in his noblest long 

 poem, "In Memoriam." Clearly they did not sug- 

 gest to him a blank wall of material things. Later in 

 his life he seems to have feared them as rivals: "Ter- 

 rible Muses" he calls them, who might eclipse the 

 crowned ones themselves, the great poets. 



Our own Emerson was evidently stimulated by 

 the result of physical science, and often availed him- 

 self, in his later poems and essays, of its material 

 by way of confirming or illustrating the moral law 

 upon which he was wont to string everything in 

 reach. Emerson, in his eagerness for illustrative 

 material in writing his essays, reminds one of the 

 pressure certain birds are under when building 

 their nests, birds like the oriole, for instance. 

 Hang pieces of colored yarn near the place where 

 70 



