44 SCIENCE FROM AN EASY CHAIR 



MetchnikofFs view that Goethe, in the second part of 

 Faust, is chiefly bent upon depicting the persistence of the 

 amorous passion in old age of which Goethe himself was 

 an example and Tolstoi declared that this gave a new 

 meaning to the poem, which he had always hitherto found 

 dull and unintelligible. But when Metchnikoff described 

 in glowing words the joy and even rapture with which 

 man will hereafter welcome the repose and mystery of 

 death, having completed a long and healthy life of some 

 hundred years, Tolstoi declared that this was indeed a fine 

 conception, although it was entirely subversive of his own 

 notions as to the significance of life and death. Tolstoi 

 also stated that he had written his stories rapidly 

 and without effort, but that his essays on morality and 

 religion had cost him great labour ; and, further, that he 

 could not now remember the former, though the latter still 

 were developing and incessantly occupied his thought. 



It was admitted with regret by Darwin that he ceased 

 in middle age to care for poetry and art, though there 

 seems to be no doubt that he mistook fatigue and pre- 

 occupation of mind for a real change in taste and power 

 of appreciation. It is interesting to place beside this the 

 case of the great literary artist, Tolstoi, who not only 

 frankly confesses that he refuses to be guided by reason 

 and follows sentiment, but is also profoundly ignorant 

 upon all the most ordinary topics of human life outside 

 his own village, and of all Nature and her workings. 

 Would Tolstoi have been a greater or a smaller artist if 

 he had had a larger knowledge of the things that are ? 

 Was Darwin's great scientific achievement really related 

 to an innate indifference to what is called " poetry " ? I 

 will not now discuss the matter, but I am convinced that 

 so far as natural gift is concerned, the keenest scientific 

 capacity is not only compatible with the fullest sensibility 

 to art and with the power of poetical vision and expression, 



