ies in science.
Even if he should not discover the highest forms of literary expression,
he might find that here was the large promise of a new order. Possibly
he would discover major compositions of the excellence of which we
ourselves are not aware.

It is less than forty years since Darwin and less than fifty years since
Agassiz. It is only twenty years since Pasteur. It is only a century and
a quarter since Franklin, fifty years since Faraday, less than
twenty-five since Tyndall. It is sixty years since Humboldt glorified
the earth with the range of his imagination. It is not so very far even
if we go back to Newton and to Kepler. Within the span of a century we
count name after name of prophets who have set us on a new course. So
complete has been the revolution that we lost our old bearings before we
had found the new. We have not yet worked out the new relationships, nor
put into practice their moral obligations, nor have we grasped the
fulness of our privileges. We have not yet made the new knowledge
consciously into a philosophy of life or incorporated it completely into
working attitudes of social equity. Therefore, not even now are we ripe
for the new literature.

We have gone far enough, however, to know that science is not
unsympathetic and that it is not contemptuous of the unknown. By lens
and prism and balance and line we measure minutely whatever we can
sense; then with bared heads we look out to the great unknown and we
cast our lines beyond the stars. There are no realms beyond which the
prophecy of science would not go. It resolves the atom and it weighs the
planets.

Among the science men I have found as many poetic souls as among the
literary men, although they may not know so much poetry, and they are
not equally trained in literary expression; being free of the restraint
of conventional criticism, they are likely to have a peculiarly keen and
sympathetic projection. Close dissection long continued may not lead to
free artistic literary expression; this is as true of literary anatomy
as of biological anatomy: but this does not destroy the freedom of other
souls, and it may afford good material for the artist.

Two kinds of popular writing are confused in the public mind, for there
are two classes that express the findings of scientific inquiry. The
prevailing product is that which issues from establishments and
institutions. This is supervised, edited, and made to conform; it is the
product o