fact, too, and an even more complicated scientific
fact than matter and force. When Wordsworth says that he was

"Contented if he might enjoy
The things that others understand,"

he is but stating the fact that there is a mystical poetical perception
of nature as well as a scientific one. Perhaps when science has done
her work on elemental atoms and forces, she will turn to the analysis
of psychological problems. And meanwhile it must suffice to recognise
that the work of the scientist is as essentially poetical, if done in a
certain spirit, as the work of the poet. It is essentially poetical,
because the deeper that the man of science dives into the mystery, the
darker and more bewildering it becomes. Science, instead of solving the
mystery, has added enormously to its complexity by disposing of the old
comfortable theory that man is the darling of Nature and that all
things were created for his use. We know now that man is only a local
and temporary phenomenon in the evolution of some dim and gigantic law;
that he perhaps represents the highest development which that law has
at present evolved, but that probably we are rather at the threshold
than at the climax of evolution, and that there will be developments in
the future that we cannot even dimly apprehend. If the contemplation of
nature and the scientific analysis of nature are meant to have any
effect upon humanity at all, it seems as though both were intended to
stimulate our wonder and to torture us with the desire for solving the
enigma.

Perhaps the difference between the poetical view and the scientific
view of nature is this--that while scientific investigation stimulates
a man to penetrate the secret as far as he can, with the noble desire
to contribute what minute discoveries he may to the solution of the
problem, the poetical contemplation of nature tends to produce in the
mind a greater tranquillity of emotion. The scientist must feel that,
even when he has devoted his whole life to investigation, he has but
helped on the possibilities of solution a little. There can be no sense
of personal fruition as long as the abyss remains unplumbed; and
therefore nature is to him like a blind and blank mystery that reveals
its secrets slowly and almost reluctantly, and defies investigation.
Whereas the poet may rather feel that he at this precise point of time
may master and possess the emotion that nature can provide for his
soul, and that he is fully