d as our mistaken pessimist listens, what then becomes of his theory
that science and philosophy have killed the poet in mankind? Might not
some reasoner of the more cheerful school urge in triumph just the
contrary? Might he not say that it was precisely the new light shed by
the dawning Renaissance which elicited the poetry of Dante's day? That
it was precisely the flood of illumination on English thought in the
sixteenth century which called forth the Elizabethan outburst? That it
was precisely the eminent scientific and critical toiling of the
eighteenth century which led up to that pronounced and unanimous
romantic movement of recent times in England, Germany and France? We
need not at present strongly urge that argument. It is enough to have
shown the unsoundness of its contrary.

It may, however, be answered that science hitherto is only a preface to
what is to come, that even the last generation of discovery is nothing
in comparison with the expansion of our knowledge and the enslavement of
natural forces which must be looked for in the years on which we enter.
Well, we are not sure of that. It has been a foible of many an era to
think itself remarkable as a time when "the world's great age begins
anew." But let us grant, if you choose, that we are moving into an
incomparable age of scientific light and clearness, and at the same time
of unprecedented social change. Is it necessary that this clear light of
science should be dry and cold? And is it inevitable that the destined
social existence shall be arid and hard, cramping, drab, and dreary?
Will analysis destroy all wonder, or classification annihilate all
beauty? And will human nature be so transformed by some system of social
contract that a man will no longer feel love or grief, or any other of
those emotions which have been his, and increasingly his, since the days
of Adam?

There is, we have seen, no basis in history for assuming that poetry
will cease. Is there any ground in speculation? The assertion goes that
imagination will be shrivelled by the chill of scientific practicality,
that minds trained and informed by physical and mental science will
possess too overpowering a sense of logic, too habitual a consciousness
of the matter-of-fact, to indulge in the visions and imaginings which
are supposed to be the life of poetry. It is urged that, when every inch
of the world has rendered its hard statistics to the blue-books, and
when the variety of the n