IN THE NOON OF SCIENCE 



and lower world. The heaven of the ideal seems sud- 

 denly clouded over, and we feel the oppression of 

 the physical. The sacred mysteries vanish, and in 

 their place we have diflScult or unsolvable problems. 



Physical science magnifies physical things. The 

 universe of matter with its irrefragable laws looms 

 upon our mental horizon larger than ever before, to 

 some minds blotting out the very heavens. There 

 are no more material things in the world than there 

 always have been, and we are no more dependent 

 upon them than has always been the case, but we 

 are more intently and exclusively occupied with 

 them, subduing them to our ever-growing physical 

 and mental needs. 



I am always inclined to defend physical science 

 against the charge of materialism, and that it is the 

 enemy of those who would live in the spirit; but 

 when I do so I find I am unconsciously arguing with 

 myself against the same half-defined imputation. I 

 too at times feel the weary weight of the material 

 universe as it presses upon us in a hundred ways in 

 our mechanical and scientific age. I well under- 

 stand what one of our women writers meant the 

 other day when she spoke of the "blank wall of 

 material things" to which modern science leads us. 

 The feminine temperament — and the literary and 

 artistic temperament generally — is quite likely, I 

 think, to feel something like a blank wall shutting 

 it in, in the results of modern physical sciences. We 

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