ences of their poet leaders. The
one class are endowed to an exceptional degree with receptivity;
the other are also receptive, but are dependent on those who can
give expression to the intuitions which are, though in varying
degrees, a possession common to humanity at large. As Sir
Lewis Morris puts it:

"All men are poets if they might but tell
The dim ineffable changes which the sight
Of natural beauty works on them."

He, too, recognises the mediating function of the poet.

"We are dumb,
Save that from finer souls at times may rise
Once in an age, faint inarticulate sounds,
Low halting tones of wonder, such as come
From children looking on the stars, but still
With power to open to the listening ear
The Fair Divine Unknown, and to unseal
Heaven's inner gates before us evermore."

And what is this but to claim for the mass of men, in varying
but definite degrees, a capacity for the experiences of the
nature-mystic? Poetry and Nature Mysticism are linked together
in an imperishable life so long as man is man and the world is
the world.

It will have been apparent that in what has been said about the
relation of poetry to science, there has been no shadow of
hostility to science as such, but only to the exclusive claims so
often preferred on its behalf. Let a French philosopher of the
day conclude this chapter by a striking statement of the
relationship that should exist between these seemingly
incompatible modes of mental activity. In a recent number of
the "Revue Philosophique," Joussain writes as follows:

"On peut ainsi se demander si le savant, a mesure qu'il tend vers
une connaissance plus complete du reel, n'adopte pas, en un
certain sens, le point de vue propre au poete. Boileau disait de la
physique de Descartes qu'elle avait coupe la gorge a la poesie.
La raison en est qu'elle s'en tenait au pur mecanisme et ne
definissait la matiere que par l'etendue et le mouvement. Mais la
physique de Descartes n'a pu subsister. Et, avec la gravitation
universelle que Leibniz considerait a juste titre, du point de vue
cartesien, comme une _qualite occulte_, avec les attractions, les
repulsions, les affinites chimiques, avec la theorie de
l'evolution, la science tend de plus en plus a penetrer la vie reele
des choses. Elle se rapproche, bon gre, mal gre, de la
metaphysique et de la poesie, en prenant une conscience plus
profonde de la force et du devenir. C'es