208 BIRDS OF THE COUNTRYSIDE 



as unconscious as a pompous man is of the irony his 

 demonstrations of truth excite. In his work, truth,, 

 that Quaker maid, enjoys herself in motley as to the 

 manner born. His was a pane in the dome of many- 

 coloured glass, not clouded like the others, but admitting 

 the white radiance through an undimmed surface of 

 a very peculiar shape. His other dualism does not seem 

 to us so remarkable as it was then. There are examples 

 to-day of writers who recognize that art and science 

 reach the same conclusions through different paths, 

 Havelock Ellis, Arthur Thomson, W. H. Hudson, Patrick 

 Geddes and a very few others, and doubtless there will 

 be many more in the future, when art and science are 

 seen to be indispensable and complementary to one 

 another and our absurd departmentalizing of truth has 

 been broken down. For science fulfils the law and the 

 prophets, and the Honorary Presidents of the British 

 Association should be Blake, Shelley, Wordsworth and 

 Francis Thompson. 



Modern science has made nature infinitely more inter- 

 esting to man than ever before in the history of the 

 world ; it has heightened and broadened our knowledge 

 of natural phenomena, not to the loss but the gain of 

 our sense of wonder at the eternal fitness of things. The 

 faculties of observation and imagination have come to 

 supplement and strengthen each other in such a way 

 that spiritual reality shall not degenerate into make- 

 believe and material reality into the staleness of wont- 

 The most wonderful of fairy tales have turned out to 

 be the facts and history of evolution, while the more 

 profound among men of science have come more and 

 more to use the terminology of art in expressing them. 

 For the self-expression of nature is now seen to be in 

 unity, individuality, creativeness and process the most 

 masterly work of art revealed to human senses. Of 

 this revelation Waterton is one of the pioneers. 



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