SCIENCE AND THE POETS 77 



ideal. He has taken coiirage from her revelations. 

 He would show another side to nature equally won- 

 derful. Such men as Tyndall confess their ohliga- 

 tion to him. His optics, his electricity, his spec- 

 trum analysis, his chemical affinity, his perpetual 

 forces, his dynamics, his litmus tests, his germs in 

 the air, etc., are more wonderful than theirs. How 

 much he makes of circles, of polarity, of attraction 

 and repulsion, of natural selection, of 



" The famous might that lurks 

 In reaction and recoil, 

 Makes flame to freeze, and ice to boil." 



He is the astronomer and philosopher of the 

 moral sentiment. He is full of the surprises and 

 paradoxes, the subtle relations and affinities, the 

 great in the little, the far in the near, the sublime 

 in the mean, that science has disclosed in the world 

 about us. He would find a more powerful fulmi- 

 nant than has yet been discovered. He likes to see 

 two harmless elements come together with a concus- 

 sion that will shake the roof. It is not so much for 

 material that Emerson is indebted to science as for 

 courage, example, inspiration. 



When he used scientific material he fertilized it 

 with his own spirit. This the true poet will always 

 do when he goes to this field. Hard pan will not 

 grow corn ; meteoric dust will not nourish melons. 

 The poets adds something to the hard facts of science 

 that is like vegetable mould to the soil, like the con- 

 tributions of animal and vegetable life, and of the 

 rains, the dews, the snows. 



