130 THE NEW SCIENCE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE 



Ape". But if one will really know the truth,^^ he must first take 

 modesty as his guide, must strip off the "equipage of Pride", 

 "Learning's Luxury", and "Idleness", "tricks to show the stretch 

 of human brain", then will he see revealed how little is the sum of 

 actual knowledge possessed by man.^^ Behind and beyond every 

 human theory lies an unanswerable question; that is God. Man's 

 duty, therefore, is to trace the beneficent design of his creator in 

 the world about him and cease to crack his brain over natural 

 causes. The attraction of atoms, the movement of the spheres, 

 the orders of living creatures, the harmony in the universe are 

 matters for praise, not investigation. Therefore, the Indian is a 

 happier man than the scientist, for 



"His soul, proud Science never taught to stray 

 Far as the solar walk, or milky way".^^ 

 More pointed satire is found in the Dunciad, especially in Bk. 

 IV, the diatribe on education. Here "Science groans in chains", 

 but mad Mathesis (mathematics) runs free and lifts her ecstatic 

 stare to pure space, and 



"Now running round the circle, finds its square".^® 

 The Cartesians with their "Mechanic Cause" nobly take a "Priori 

 Road", and build up nature as they will.^"" Antiquarians, botan- 

 ists, zoologists come bearing as their tributes, "a nest, a Toad, a 

 Fungus, or a Flower ".^°^ One virtuoso seeks preferment from the 

 queen of Dullness because he has madly pursued and ruthlessly 

 slain a lovely butterfly, — 



"Whose spoil this paper offers to your eye. 

 Fair ev'n in death! this peerless Butterfly. "^''^ 

 So, Pope declares, there is a bias to every mind ; some dullards are 

 aroused by a humming-bird, some find pleasure in dissecting "a 

 member of the cockle-kind", some "may wander in a wilderness 

 of moss", some run mad after comets, some 



»«1. 34. 



•^U. 43-52. 



»8 Epistle I, 101-2. 



•SI. 21. 



»o«l. 31. 



i«ll. 465-71. 



102 1. 380. 



