THE CONFLICT OF OLD AND NEW IDEAS 65 



entering into all the avenues of life that made men ready to dis- 

 card the old idols and the "ancient faith". 



Thus far, then, the men of imagination who had the best oppor- 

 tunity to know the new scientific ideas, with the exception of 

 Glanvil and Burnet, show a general lack of appreciation of them 

 and their literary possibilities. INIilton, indeed, had found an 

 infinite universe without abandoning the old science; to him the 

 world had become a speck in space and man "an atom of an atom- 

 world". But other poets had followed Hobbes's dictum, — "the 

 subject of poetry is not natural science but the manners of men".^^^ 

 The day had not yet fully dawned, "when, through the roof of 

 the little theatre on which the drama of man's history had been 

 enacted, men began to see the eternal stars shining in silent con- 

 tempt upon their petty imaginings ",^^^ or when "they began to 

 suspect that the whole scenery was but a fabric Avoven by their own 

 imaginations".^^* And, finally, imagination had not yet over- 

 taken reason, nor had the ' ' framework of formulae gathered round 

 it the necessary associations" for a direct expression of emotion, 

 without the aid of an outworn hypothesis. 



^"'Hobbes, Thomas, Letter to D'Avenant, 1650. 



1'^ Stephens, Leslie, History of 18th Century Thought, vol. I, p. 82. 



i«Ibid. vol. I, p. 15. 



