MAN THE INTERPRETER OF NATURE. 189 



whose utterance Galileo had been condemned, and giving to 

 Kepler's laws a significance of which their author had never 

 dreamed, — what was the meaning of that agitation which pre- 

 vented the philosopher from completing his computation, and 

 compelled him to hand it over to his friend ? That it was not 

 the thought of his own greatness, but the glimpse of the grand 

 universal order thus revealed to his mental vision, which shook 

 the serene and massive soul of Newton to its foundations, we have 

 the proof in that beautiful comparison in which he likened himself 

 to a child picking up shells on the shore of the vast ocean of 

 truth — a comparison which will be evidence to all time at once of 

 his true philosophy and of his profound humility. 



Though it is with the intellectual representation of Nature 

 which we call science that we are primarily concerned, it will not 

 be without its use to cast a glance in the first instance at the other 

 two principal characters under which man acts as her interpreter 

 — those, namely, of the artist and of the poet. 



The Artist serves as the interpreter of Nature, not when he 

 works as the mere copyist, delineating that which he sees with his 

 bodily eyes, and which we could see as well for ourselves ; but 

 when he endeavours to awaken within us the perception of those 

 beauties and harmonies which his own trained sense has recognized, 

 and thus impart to us the pleasure he has himself derived from 

 their contemplation. As no two artists agree in the original con- 

 stitution and acquired habits of their minds, all look at Nature 

 with different (mental) eyes ; so that to each, Nature is what he 

 individually sees in her. 



The Poet, again, serves as the interpreter of Nature, not so 

 much when by skilful word-painting (whether in prose or verse 1 

 he calls up before our mental vision the picture of some actual or 

 ideal scene, however beautiful ; as when, by rendering into appro- 

 l)riate forms those deeper impressions made by the nature around 

 him on the moral and emotional part of his own nature, he transfers 

 these impressions to the corresponding part of ours. For it xs the 

 attribute of the true poet to penetrate the secret of those mysterious 

 influences which we all unknowingly experience ; and having dis- 

 covered this to himself, to bring others, by the power he thus 

 wields, into the like sympathetic relation with Nature — evoking 



