IN THE NOON OF SCIENCE 



the oriole is building its nest, and the bird seizes 

 upon them eagerly and weaves them into the struc- 

 ture, not mindful at all of the obvious incongruity. 

 Emerson in the fever of composition often snatched 

 at facts of science that he had read in books or 

 heard in lectures, and worked them into his text in 

 the same way, always reinforcing his sentence with 

 them. The solvent power of his thought seemed 

 equal to any fact of physical science. 



Whitman was, if anything, still more complacent 

 and receptive in the presence of science. He makes 

 less direct use of its results than either of the other 

 poets mentioned, but one feels that he has put it 

 more completely under his feet than they, and used 

 it as a vantage-ground from which to launch his 

 tremendous "I say." 



"I lie abstracted and hear the tale of things, and the 



reason of things, 

 They are so beautiful I nudge myself to listen." 



Addressing men of science he says, 



" Gentlemen, to you the first honors always; 

 Your facts are useful and yet they are not my dwelling; 

 I but enter by them to an area of my dwelling," 



as all of us do who would live in a measure the life 

 of the spirit. To Whitman the blank wall, if there 

 was any wall, was in his area and not in his dwelling 

 itself. 



The same may be said of Henri Bergson whose 

 recent volume, "Creative Evolution," is destined, 

 71 



