SCIENCE AND THE POETS 79 



life in their sidereal relations, against a background 

 of immensity, depth beyond depth, terror beyond 

 terror, splendor above splendor, surrounding them. 

 Indeed, without the light thrown upon the universe 

 by the revelations of astronomy, Carlyle would prob- 

 ably never have broken from the Calvinistic creed 

 of his fathers. By a kind of sure instinct he 

 spurned all that phase of science which results in 

 such an interpretation of the universe as is embodied 

 in the works of Spencer, — works which, whatever 

 their value, are so utterly barren to the literary and 

 artistic mind. 



The inquisitions of science, the vivisections, the 

 violent, tortuous, disrupting processes, are not al- 

 ways profitable. Wherein nature answers the most 

 easily, cheerfully, directly, we find our deepest in- 

 terest; where science just anticipates the natural 

 sense, as it were, or shows itself a little quicker- 

 witted than our slow faculties, as in the discovery of 

 the circulation of the blood for instance. The real 

 wonder is that mankind should not always have 

 known and believed in the circulation of the blood, 

 because circulation is the law of nature. Everything 

 circulates, or finally comes back to its starting-point. 

 Stagnation is death. The sphericity of the earth, 

 too, — how could we ever believe anything else ? 

 Does not the whole system of things centre into 

 balls, — every form in nature strive to be spherical 1 

 The sphere is the infinity of form, that in which aU 

 specific form is merged and lost, or into which it 

 escapes or gets transformed. The doctrine of the 



