If thou would'st know the mystic song 



Chaunted when the sphere was young, 



Aloft, abroad, the patan swells, 



O wise man, hear'st thou half it tells! 



To the open ear it sings 



The early genesis of things ; 



Of tendency through endless ages 



Of star-dust and star-pilgrimages, 



Of rounded worlds, of space and time, 



Of the old floods' subsiding slime, 



Of chemic matter, force and form, 



Of poles and powers, cold, wet, and warm. 



The rushing metamorphosis 



Dissolving all that fixture is, 



Melts things that be to things that seem. 



And solid nature to a dream.' 



EMERSON. 



Was war' ein Gott der nur von aussen stiesse, 

 Im Kreis das All am Finger laufen liesse 

 Ihm ziemt's, die Welt im Innern zu bewegen, 

 Natur in Sich, Sich in Natur zu hegen.' 



GOETHE. 



VIII. 

 SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION* 



1 Lastly, physical investigation, more than anything besides, 

 helps to teach us the actual value and right use of the Imagina- 

 tion of that wondrous faculty, which, left to ramble uncontrolled, 

 leads us astray into a wilderness of perplexities and errors, a 

 land of mists and shadows; but which, properly controlled by 

 experience and reflection, becomes the noblest attribute of man ; 

 the source of poetic genius, the instrument of discovery in Science, 



* Discourse delivered before the British Association at Liver- 

 pool, September 16, 1870. 



101 



