PHILOSOPHY AND SPECIALTIES. 
33 
get the right word, but the scientific or the philosophic 
writer who deals with modern concepts will seldom find 
the right word in the Anglo-Saxon vocables for the sim¬ 
ple reason that these concepts had not been formulated 
before the English tongue had become strengthened through 
its assimilation of Latin and the natural selections of collo¬ 
quialism, patois, and “ slang.” Therefore let us be eclectics, 
not purists, and fear neither Latin nor lingua franca. Let 
us get the right word for the right use if we must dig for, 
beg, borrow, or steal it, but be chary of coining it. Coinage 
belongs to the sovereignty of the people and our private 
stamps will seldom pass current. 
The second suggestion is that poetry should be incorpo¬ 
rated, not merely injected, into a scientific production. This 
does not renew the adjudicated claim of the imagination, 
“ the vision and the faculty divine,” to scientific use, but re¬ 
fers to the manner of expression. Never let prose get into 
your poetry, but put all the poetry you can invoke into your 
prose. Mo-li&re’s hero was astonished to learn that he had 
been talking prose all his life without knowing it, and con¬ 
versely our best prose writers on the heaviest subjects might 
find that the poetry in their prose was the secret of their suc¬ 
cess. But they would admit the fact without surprise, for it 
is markedly true that most of the great writers of prose have 
been successful in verse, which has drilled them in the mar¬ 
shaling of vivid phrase and in the harmonies and discords 
of thought. This conception of poetry does not mean the 
evanescent, gaudy tints on the bubbles of a scientaster, but 
the informing and vitalizing light which not only refracts 
and reflects, but radiates from an original source. Prose, as 
well as verse, may be profound or acute, intense or pictur¬ 
esque, elevated or simple, abstract or dramatic, severe or 
sumptuous. Indeed the very form of prose can only be dis¬ 
tinguished from that of poetry by the absence of meter and 
rhyme, rhythm being common to both. The spontaneous 
characterization of the highest order of prose writings is that 
they are full of light, fire, spirit, and life, and the term poet 
3—Bull. Phil. Soc., Wash., XI, 1889. 
