SCIENCE AND MAN. 357 



brightness and the usefulness of life, as well as its 

 darkness and disaster, depend to a great extent upon 

 our own use or abuse of this miraculous organ. 



Accustomed as I am to harsh language, I am quite 

 prepared to hear my poetic rendering ' branded as a 

 falsehood ' and a fib.' The vituperation is unmerited, 

 for poetry or ideality, and untruth are assuredly very 

 different things. The one may vivify, while the other 

 kills. When St. John extends the notion of a soul to 

 ' souls washed in the blood of Christ ' does he ' fib ' ? In- 

 deed, if the appeal to ideality is censurable, Christ him- 

 self ought not to have escaped censure. Nor did he escape 

 it. * How can this man give us his flesh to eat ? ' ex- 

 pressed the sceptical flouting of unpoetic natures. Such 

 are still amongst us. Cardinal Manning would doubt- 

 less tell any Protestant who rejects the doctrine of tran- 

 substantiation that he * fibs ' away the plain words of 

 his Saviour when he reduces ' the Body of the Lord ' in 

 the sacrament to a mere figure of speech. 



Though misuse may render it grotesque or insin- 

 cere, the idealisation of ancient conceptions, when done 

 consciously and above board, has, in my opinion, an im- 

 portant future. We are not radically different from 

 our historic ancestors, and any feeling which affected 

 them profoundly, requires only appropriate clothing to 

 affect us. The world will not lightly relinquish its heri- 

 tage of poetic feeling, and metaphysic will be welcomed 

 when it abandons its pretensions to scientific discovery 

 and consents to be ranked as a kind of poetry. A good 

 symbol,' says Emerson, is a missionary to persuade 

 thousands. The Vedas, the Edda, the Koran, are each 

 remembered by its happiest figure. There is no more 

 welcome gift to men than a new symbol. They assimilate 

 themselves to it, deal with it in all ways, and it will last 

 a hundred years. Then comes a new genius and brmgi 



