sees in the explosion of antiquated errors, nothing more 

 than a total obliteration of all that is glorious in the 

 realms of fancy. It may be interesting to attempt to 

 trace out the sources of this wide-spread error : for it is 

 obvious that no erroneous sentiment of this kind could 

 have obtained such universality, unless it reflected in 

 so.ne measure the peculiar characteristics of the philo- 

 sophy of the age. The origin of these fallacious views 

 in relation to the influence of the study of the physical 

 sciences, may be traced to several causes. I shall select 

 from them only a f^w of the more striking and prominent. 

 1. One of the most efiicient causes of this anti- 

 sesthetic sentiment seems to me to be the general 

 predominance of the analytical spirit among the culti- 

 vators of science. Nothing exercises a more injurious 

 influence on the development of the imaginative faculties 

 than the prevalence of a system which seems to subject 

 nature to a process of disintegration. It is the province 

 of the imagination to combine and to build — not to 

 tear down and to scatter. During the last century, 

 the influence of this spirit was so overshadowing, that 

 it is by no means astonishing that Burke and his con- 

 temporaries mistook a transient phase in the progress of 

 civilization for a permanent condition of scientific de- 

 velopment. The temporary ascendancy of the analytical 

 spirit seems to have been a necessary stage in the 

 progress of the human mind towards those higher and 

 more general views, which physical science has be- 

 queathed to our age. Such was the mission of the 

 brilliant galaxy of physical philosophers who flourished 

 during the last century. They developed and elaborated 

 those specialities by means of which we arc enabled to 



