POETRY AND SCIENCE. 815 



of the actual world around us, it is unquestionably the expression 

 of an attempt on the part of the mind of man to deal with life 

 from the standpoint of the feelings. It has been well said that 

 while science is concerned with the study of the relations of 

 things among themselves, religion and poetry are concerned with 

 the study of the relations of things to us. This gives us the poet's 

 problem. Regarding the new thought through the medium of the 

 imagination, he has to inquire in what way and to what extent the 

 changes in our conceptions of the universe and man brought 

 about by science affect our emotional outlook our feelings re- 

 specting our own individual lives, our sympathies with the lives 

 of others, our attitude toward Nature, our hope for the future of 

 the race here and of the individual hereafter. 



What, then, will be the poet's response to the intellectual con- 

 ditions under which he lives ? Confronted as he is by this large 

 mass of unemotionalized knowledge, what will be his message to 

 his time ? It may be one of passionate protest against or obsti- 

 nate indifference to the revolutionary movement in progress 

 around him, and which may seem to him to be taking all the 

 charm from life, all the beauty from the world. It may be one of 

 simple doubt and hesitation ; a mere cry of Why ? and Whither ? 

 not so much an answer to the mute questionings of men, as a 

 translation of those questionings into language and form. Or, in 

 the third place, it may be a glimpse of coming things an attempt 

 to catch the new thought and force it to an emotional revelation. 

 And as no man can wholly exclude the " element of necessity from 

 his labor/' or " quite emancipate himself from his age and coun- 

 try," * so in one or other of these three ways will the forces of the 

 time influence and fashion the poet's work. His attitude will 

 thus be one of reaction, of uncertainty, or of prophecy ; his gospel 

 a gospel of evasion, of skepticism, or of promise. 



Hereafter I hope to sketch the history of the poetry of the 

 nineteenth century from the point of view now indicated that is, 

 to study it in direct connection with the scientific and industrial 

 movements of our time. Here, in the illustration of the above 

 theory, I must content myself with the mention of a few typical 

 names. 



For the most distinctive example of the poetry of evasion we 

 turn naturally to the pages of John Keats. Leave out of ques- 

 tion the artistic qualities of his work, which have absorbed most 

 critics, but which do not concern us here, and the most signifi- 

 cant thing about Keats is his absolute indifference to the life and 

 spirit of his time. The world about him was alive with fresh in- 

 terests and hopes ; watchwords of progress were in the air he 



* Emerson, Essay on Art. 



