362 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



there are feelings in the heart. Rossini has already been criticised 

 with severity for the innovations he introduced into musical composi- 

 tion, and for his departure from the simple themes and solos of the 

 olden time. A similar reproach was laid against Wagner, and is 

 doubtless held in reserve for the next musical genius that shall arise. 



Extinction has also been predicted for the poetic art, but with no 

 better reason than for the other arts. Great poets still exist, and are 

 still produced. They may not excel in the same way as their prede- 

 cessors, but they excel as well, and reflect with equal power and equal 

 grace the feelings of their age. 



From the external conditions of art we pass to the mental and 

 moral conditions ; they are the most important ones. The question 

 before us is, if the scientific spirit, which is gradually penetrating 

 humanity and fashioning its brain from generation to generation, will 

 not, in the long run, destroy the three essential faculties of the artist 

 — imagination, the creative instinct, and sentiment. 



According to some philosophers, the development of the scientific 

 spirit is destined to arrest that of the poetic imagination. The reign 

 of science, succeeding to the dynasty of legends and religions, will 

 engender a reign of " platitude " ; without mystery, say others — with- 

 out superstition, Goethe added, there can be no true poetry. The 

 poetic imagination does, in fact, need a kind of superstition, in the 

 ancient sense of the word, which will not permit it always to explain 

 events by their cold reasons, and a sort of ignorance, a demi-obscurity, 

 under the cover of which it may play at will around things. Nothing 

 is less poetic, we might say, than a broad, bare road devoid of nooks 

 and turnings, with the sun shining directly upon it ; but thickets, 

 shrubberies, shady corners, or anything we can not look into at the 

 first glance, whatever appears to hide from and evade us, these consti- 

 tute rural poetry. The fault of bare plains is that they conceal noth- 

 ing from us, and we do not like a straight line because we can see 

 all there is to the end of it. The indefinable charm of evening con- 

 sists in its showing us everything half veiled ; and of moonlight that 

 it gives a softness to objects whose outlines we can only dimly make 

 out, and causes them to appear as through a thin, transparent obscu- 

 rity. If the skies were cleared of what about them is mysterious, what 

 would distinguish them from the earth we tread under our feet ? The 

 " aching for the infinite " that troubles some minds, also gives them 

 some of their most precious joys ; and such minds would probably be 

 reluctant to exchange it for universal knowledge. 



To us the incompatibility which these writers endeavor to estab- 

 lish between poetry and science is superficial. Poetry will always 

 find a justification in science. Matthew Arnold remarks, in his essay 

 on Maurice de Guerin, that poetry as well as science is an interpreta- 

 tion of the world. The interpretations of science will never give us 

 that intimate sense of things that the interpretations of poetry give 



