The Botany of Shakespeare 233 



of his mind. Faraday so saw the world of force, Newton 

 of mathematical law, and Tyndall's "scientific use of 

 the imagination" lies in the same direction. 



And so the man of science and the poet have much in 

 common. Both use the natural world, and the imagina- 

 tion is for each an instrument of effort. The poet's gen- 

 eralization is a splendid vision in a world ideal, sug- 

 gested, no doubt, by what is actual, and liable here and 

 there to coincide with truth; the generalization of the 

 scientific man is likewise a vision, but it rests upon the 

 actual, upon the ascertained fact at the greatest number 

 of points possible, and disappoints us only that it is not 

 everywhere coincident. The poet dreams of Atlantis, 

 the lost continent, the islands of the blest, and builds us 

 pictures that vanish with his song ; the man of science too 

 beholds the continents rise ; scene after scene he likewise 

 makes to pass across our startled vision ; but his are his- 

 tory ; his tapestries are wrought in the loom of time. 



The poet writes the book of Genesis, with the herbs 

 bringing forth fruit after their kind ; the man of science 

 figures fossil leaves and cones and fruit. Only at the last 

 do poetry and science again agree : 



1 ' The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, 

 The solemn temples, the great globe itself 

 Yea, all which it inherit shall dissolve, 

 And like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a 

 rack behind ! ' ' 



And when the man of science gathers all his data, and 

 collates fact with fact, and builds the superstructure of 

 his vision, with him, too, all things fade and vanish in the 

 infinity of the future. 



