THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE 217 



the human mind since it began to relax its hold 

 upon tradition and the past; and we behold man 

 reconciled, happy, ecstatic, full of reverence, awe, 

 and wonder, reinstated in. Paradise, — the paradise 

 of perfect knowledge and unrestricted faith. 



It needs but a little pondering to see that the 

 great poet of the future will not be afraid of science, 

 but will rather seek to plant his feet upon it as 

 upon a rock. He knows that, from an enlarged 

 point of view, there is no feud between Science and 

 Poesy, any more than there is between Science and 

 Religion, or between Science and Life. He sees 

 that the poet and the scientist do not travel op- 

 posite but parallel roads, that often approach each 

 other very closely, if they do not at times actually 

 join. The poet will always pause when he finds 

 himself in opposition to science ; and the scientist is 

 never more worthy the name than when he escapes 

 from analysis into synthesis, and gives us living 

 wholes. And science, in its present bold and recep- 

 tive mood, may be said to be eminently creative, and 

 to have made every first-class thinker and every large 

 worker in any aesthetic or spiritual field immeasur- 

 ably its debtor. It has dispelled many illusions, 

 but it has more than compensated the imagination 

 by the unbounded vistas it has opened up on either 

 hand. It has added to our knowledge, but it has 

 added to our ignorance in the same measure: the 

 large circle of light only reveals the larger circle of 

 darkness that encompasses it, and life and being and 

 the orbs are enveloped in a greater mystery to the 



