ssect it. As Wordsworth phrases it, poetry is "the
breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; the impassioned expression
which is in the countenance of all science." Philosophy is useful to the
poet only as it presents facts for his synthesis; Shelley states,
"Reason is to the imagination as the instrument to the agent, as the
body to the spirit, as the shadow to the substance." [Footnote: _A
Defense of Poetry_.]

To this the philosopher may rejoin that poetry, far from making
discoveries beyond the bourne of philosophy, is a mere popularization, a
sugar-coating, of the philosopher's discoveries. Tolstoi contends,

True science investigates and brings to human perception such
truths and such knowledge as the people of a given time and
society consider most important. Art transmits these truths
from the region of perception to the region of emotion. And
thus a false activity of science inevitably causes a
correspondingly false activity of art. [Footnote: _What is
Art?_]

Such criticisms have sometimes incensed the poet till he has refused to
acknowledge any indebtedness to the dissecting hand of science, and has
pronounced the philosopher's attitude of mind wholly antagonistic to
poetry.

Philosophy will clip an angel's wings,
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
[Footnote: _Lamia_.]

Keats once complained. "Sleep in your intellectual crust!" [Footnote:
_A Poet's Epitaph_.]

Wordsworth contemptuously advised the philosopher, and not a few other
poets have felt that philosophy deadens life as a crust of ice deadens a
flowing stream. That reason kills poetry is the unoriginal theme of a
recent poem. The poet scornfully characterizes present writers,

We are they who dream no dreams,
Singers of a rising day,
Who undaunted,
Where the sword of reason gleams,
Follow hard, to hew away
The woods enchanted.
[Footnote: E. Flecker, _Donde Estan_.]

One must turn to Poe for the clearest statement of the antagonism. He
declares,

Science, true daughter of Old Time thou art!
Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes,
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart,
Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?
How should he love thee? Or how deem thee wise,
Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering
To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,
Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?
Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car,
And driven the Hamadryad from t