THE CONFLICT OF OLD AND NEW IDEAS 45 



State of Innocence, and the Fall of Man, the earth is " self-centred 

 and unmoved", while the "moving sun" brings the new day.^^ 



From all of which it follows that Dryden was not deeply im- 

 pressed with the new philosophy. It seems never to have occurred 

 to him that it was a serious matter to know the truth about nature, 

 or at least to be consistent about its representation. He never 

 learned 'to read in the great book of nature, to walk in its garden 

 and taste its plenty'. With his splendid opportunity to associate 

 with the best scientific minds of his time, he cast them all aside with 

 a word of compliment, and sought Will 's Coffee House for political 

 gossip. He was too much engrossed with the affairs of men, and 

 his genius was too "narrow" for Mm to appreciate these new 

 ideas. His general attitude is, therefore, not so much one of 

 "doubting between belief and grimace", as of indifference and in- 

 appreciation. 



To one "who examines historically the movements of imagina- 

 tion" this entire group of transition poets will illustrate the 

 "strange contradictions of human nature". Living under the 

 power of the new forces they wrote for the most part out of an 

 earlier experience; they still dwelt in imagination among the idols 

 which were fast being cast down, by the new philosophy. And 

 they were neither consistently faithful to the old nor courageously 

 true to the new. In them imagination had not yet overtaken 

 reason, and scientific facts came to them unwarmed with poetic 

 emotion. 'The bare framework of formulae had not yet gathered 

 round it the necessary associations' for a direct expression of their 

 feelings in terms of the new science.^* Milton alone, even in his 

 blindness and equivocation, found the broadened horizon of the 

 new astronomy. For the rest, they were either indifferent, unin- 

 spired or inconsistent. 



Some mention should be made of the attitude of Thomas Hobbes 

 before passing from the poets to the sharp critical struggles which 

 the new philosophy had with "the traditions of ancient faith". 

 He should have been a good friend and well-wisher of the new 

 science for this polemical philosopher, trained in the new method 

 under Lord Bacon, was imbued with its spirit. But he failed to 



** The State of Innocence, and the Fall of Man, Act II, sc. 1. 

 *♦ Stephens, Leslie, History of Eng. Thought, vol. I, p. 15. 



