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truth but with beauty, and in her eyes "seven snow- 

 drops sister the Pleiades," and a grain of dust is big 

 with the mystery of the whole Cosmos. Science 

 — the discovery, acceptation, and utilisation of the 

 Consistent — has not only saved man from fear 

 and impotence, has not only given man peace and 

 power ; it has also opened to him wide, wonderful, 

 and mysterious horizons. 



What is there narrow and cold in the scientific 

 conception of matter, of man, of the universe ? 

 Is it not rather a thrilling picture — the shred of a 

 nebula woven into a world, and the world, with its 

 wonderful burden, reeling round the sun, between 

 Venus and Mars ! Does not the idea of the atom 

 as a microcosm appeal to the imagination ? 



To maintain that science is purely utilitarian and 

 material — to try to fetter her within the horizons 

 of a coleopterist — is to have a complete miscon- 

 ception of her dominion and destiny. All related 

 knowledge is the province of science ; and if she 

 be at all wise and deep-seeing science, she walks 

 through her domains hand in hand with poetry and 

 philosophy. 



Why, then, should Robert Louis Stevenson 

 attribute to science the cold finger of a starfish ? 

 Simply because science has perils for her votaries. 

 Her province is so large, her problems so multi- 

 tudinous, her details so imperative, that many find 



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