166 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
and call your attention to a point which is by no means incongruous 
to my present subject. Our Institution, in its essays and dis- 
cussions, pays respect no less to Art than to Scrence. It is a 
noticeable fact, that to the same operation of primeval human 
speculation both these productions of man’s mind owe their 
beginning. In his earliest efforts at classified knowledge, lnagi- 
nation was his most active faculty ; and in its one produce we have 
the birth both of the scientific myth and its artistic delineation. 
Thus, it may be said, that Art and Science are twin-sisters in origin 
—both born of man’s survey of Nature’s mysterious operations. 
It is worth while to look out for all traces of unity of purpose and 
character; and here I find it at the very commencement, and all 
down the progress of mental activity. It is, of course, by different 
if not opposite methods that man reaches these two well-springs 
of knowledge, at which to slake his thirst for ideal truth and 
justice, and to gratify his love of the beautiful. The Artist 
refuses to dull the brilliancy of his impressions by a cold analysis.. 
The Scientist, on the contrary, in presence of Nature, endeavours 
to strip off the vesture, however magnificent, with which imagina- 
tion decks her; he dissects her, though with no rude ungentle 
hand, penetrates her through and through with keenest investiga-. 
tion ; and in the end his enjoyment is not less than the pleasure 
of the artist, when he has reconstructed in its intelligible whole 
this world of phenomena of which his power of abstraction and 
generalisation has enabled him to trace out the laws.* But let us 
notice more fully the origin of Art. Our Art, in its highest 
characteristics, is an exotic of old Greece, imported through Rome, 
the parent of European civilisation. The Greek mind was un- 
fettered by dogmatism in its artistic conceptions. Conventional 
types, which cramped and disfigured the art of Assyria and Egypt, 
had no influence on the Greek ; he kept himself nobly free to catch 
the fresh inspiration of Nature, whose beauty he realised with an. 
exceptional intensity. He saw his gods in earth, and sea, and 
sky ;t and while ascribing to them all that was best and highest in. 
the noblest human types with which he was familiar, he strove to 
give expression to his ideal conceptions in ideal personifications of 
human attributes. Thus Zeus or Jove, the Lord of Heaven, 
became the embodiment of strength of will; Athené, or Minerva, 
the protective goddess of wisdom and strength cambined ; Aphro- 
—* Guillemin. + D’Anvers. 
