in nature or life which the picture renders?
How happens the cultivated gentleman to enjoy a fine poem so much more
than a boor does; if it is not because his wider acquaintance with
objects and actions enables him to see in the poem much that the boor
cannot see? And if, as is here so obvious, there must be some
familiarity with the things represented, before the representation can
be appreciated, then, the representation can be completely appreciated
only when the things represented are completely understood. The fact is,
that every additional truth which a word of art expresses, gives an
additional pleasure to the percipient mind--a pleasure that is missed by
those ignorant of this truth. The more realities an artist indicates in
any given amount of work, the more faculties does he appeal to; the more
numerous ideas does he suggest; the more gratification does he afford.
But to receive this gratification the spectator, listener, or reader,
must know the realities which the artist has indicated; and to know
these realities is to have that much science.

And now let us not overlook the further great fact, that not only does
science underlie sculpture, painting, music, poetry, but that science is
itself poetic. The current opinion that science and poetry are opposed,
is a delusion. It is doubtless true that as states of consciousness,
cognition and emotion tend to exclude each other. And it is doubtless
also true that an extreme activity of the reflective powers tends to
deaden the feelings; while an extreme activity of the feelings tends to
deaden the reflective powers: in which sense, indeed, all orders of
activity are antagonistic to each other. But it is not true that the
facts of science are unpoetical; or that the cultivation of science is
necessarily unfriendly to the exercise of imagination and the love of
the beautiful. On the contrary, science opens up realms of poetry where
to the unscientific all is a blank. Those engaged in scientific
researches constantly show us that they realise not less vividly, but
more vividly, than others, the poetry of their subjects. Whoso will dip
into Hugh Miller's works of geology, or read Mr. Lewes's _Sea-side
Studies_, will perceive that science excites poetry rather than
extinguishes it. And he who contemplates the life of Goethe, must see
that the poet and the man of science can co-exist in equal activity. Is
it not, indeed, an absurd and almost a sacrilegious belief, that t