In it fable and
superstition are at an end, priestcraft is at an end, skepticism
and doubt are at an end, with all the misgivings and dark
forebodings that have dogged the human mind since it began to relax
its hold upon tradition and the past; and we behold man reconciled,
happy, ecstatic, full of reverence, awe, and wonder, reinstated in
Paradise,-- the paradise of perfect knowledge and unrestricted
faith.
It needs but a little pondering to see that the great poet of the
future will not be afraid of science, but will rather seek to plant
his feet upon it as upon a rock. He knows that, from an enlarged
point of view, there is no feud between Science and Poesy, any more
than there is between Science and Religion, or between Science and
Life. He sees that the poet and the scientist do not travel
opposite but parallel roads, that often approach each other very
closely, if they do not at times actually join. The poet will
always pause when he finds himself in opposition to science; and
the scientist is never more worthy the name than when he escapes
from analysis into synthesis, and gives us living wholes. And
science, in its present bold and receptive mood, may be said to be
eminently creative, and to have made every first-class thinker and
every large worker in any aesthetic or spiritual field immeasurably
its debtor. It has dispelled many illusions, but it has more than
compensated the imagination by the unbounded vistas it has opened
up on every hand.
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