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JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
whole world of those whose business is with the realizing, and not 
with the testing, of knowledge." 
Poetry and Art suffer in their turn. One poet laments that 
" Science withdraws the veil of enchantment from Nature. . . ." 
Another, " that Nature made undivine is now seen slavishly obey- 
ing the law of gravitation." 1 Again, "More recently man has 
been subjected to the analyzing process. The mechanical laws 
which were traced in the physical world, it was long hoped, would 
never suffice to explain the human being; he, at least, would 
remain always mysterious, spiritual, sacred. But now Man begins 
to reckon his own being among things more than half explained : 
nerve force, he thinks, is a sort of electricity. Man differs greatly 
indeed, but not generically, from the brutes. All this has, for the 
time at least, the effect of desecrating human nature." 2 
" Scientific men do now tell us, in the very language of theology, 
that all happiness lies in the knowledge of Nature, and by Nature 
they mean the universe." 3 The man of Science "believes that his 
love of truth is more simple, more unreserved, and more entirely 
self-sacrificing, than that of the moralist, whom he suspects occa- 
sionally of suppressing or disguising truth for fear of weakening 
social institutions or of offending weak brethren." 4 
The terms in which I have endeavoured to set forth the nature 
of the Modern Scientific Spirit cover perhaps the whole ground 
that lies open to the eye of one who seeks to read the signs of the 
times; but anyone well acquainted with our popular as well as 
strictly scientific literature, and able to catch that strange thing 
known as the prevailing tone of our civilization, will be able to 
distinguish between the purely intellectual element and the 
emotional and imaginative elements which, though largely de- 
veloped in the popular mind, are not properly scientific in 
character. Our popular literature has its evils as well as 
advantages. The bulk of readers are necessarily of undisciplined 
intellect, incompetent to enter with rigour and exactitude into the 
great questions .and momentous issues involved in the radical 
methods and final conclusions of pure Science ; and yet on that 
very account their emotional nature may be more stirred, and 
their imagination more fired, by the wondrous glimpses they are 
enabled to obtain from popular works of a region of research they 
1 Natural Religion, pp. 48, 49. 2 Ibid. pp. 49, 50. 
3 Ibid. p. 84. 4 Ibid. p. 125. 
