Part 9 (1/2)
”Not far out,” rejoined Gazen. ”It is called the Devil Nebula!”
”And what is it?” enquired Miss Carmichael.
”It is a cl.u.s.ter of stars--a sp.a.w.n of worlds, if I may use the expression,” answered Gazen.
”And what are they made of? I know very little of astronomy.”
”The same stuff as the earth--the same stuff as ourselves--hydrogen, iron, carbon, and other chemical elements. Just as all the books in the world are composed of the same letters, so all the celestial bodies are built of the same elements. Everything is everywhere--”
Gazen was evidently in his own element, and began a long lecture on the const.i.tution of the universe, which appeared to interest Miss Carmichael very much. Somehow it jarred upon me, and I retired to the little smoking-room, where I lit a cigar, and sat down beside the open scuttles to enjoy a quiet smoke.
”Why am I displeased with the lucubrations of the professor?” I said to myself. ”Am I jealous of him because he has monopolised the attention of Miss Carmichael? No, I think not. I confess to a certain interest in Miss Carmichael. I believe she is a n.o.ble girl, intelligent and affectionate, simple and true; with a touch of poetry in her nature which I had never suspected. She will make an excellent companion to the fortunate man who wins her. When I remember the hard life she has led so far, I confess I cannot help sympathising with her; but surely I am not in love?”
I regret to say that my friend the astronomer, with all his good qualities, was not quite free from the arrogance which leads some men of science to a.s.sume a proprietary right in the objects of their discovery.
To hear him speak you would think he had created the stars, instead of explaining a secret of their const.i.tution. However, I was used to that little failing in his manner. It was not that. No, it was chiefly the matter of his discourse which had been distasteful to me. The sight of that glorious firmament had filled me with a sentiment of awe and reverence to which his dry and brutal facts were a kind of desecration.
Why should our sentiment so often shrink from knowledge? Are we afraid its purity may be contaminated and defiled? Why should science be so inimical to poetry? Is it because the reality is never equal to our dreams? There is more in this antipathy than the fear of disillusion and alloyment. Some of it arises from a difference in the att.i.tude of the mind.
To the poet, nature is a living mystery. He does not seek to know what it is, or how it works. He allows it as a whole to impress itself on his entire soul, like the reflection in a mirror, and is content with the illusion, the effect. By its power and beauty it awakens ideas and sentiments within him. He does not even consider the part which his own mind plays, and as his fancy is quite free, he tends to personify inanimate things, as the ancients did the sun and moon.
To the man of science, on the other hand, nature is a molecular mechanism. He wishes to understand its construction, and mode of action.
He enquires into its particular parts with his intellect, and tries to penetrate the illusion in order to lay bare its cause. Heedless of its power and beauty, he remains uninfluenced by sentiment, and mistrusting the part played by his own mind, he tends to destroy the habit of personification.
Hence that opposition between science and poetry which Coleridge pointed out. The spirit of poetry is driven away by the spirit of science, just as Eros fled before the curiosity of Psyche.
How can I enjoy the perfume of a rose if I am thinking of its cellular tissue? I grow blind to the beauty of the Venus de Medicis when I measure its dimensions, or a.n.a.lyse its marble. What do I care for the drama if I am bent on going behind the scenes and examining the stage machinery? The telescope has banished Phoebus and Diana from our literature, and the spectroscope has vulgarised the stars.
Will science make an end of poetry as Renan and many others have thought? Surely not? Poetry is quite as natural and as needful to mankind as science. All men are poetical, as they are scientific, more or less.
It might even be argued that poetry is for the general, for the man as a man; while science is for the particular, for the man as a specialist; and that poetry is a higher and more essential boon than science, because it speaks to the heart, not merely to the head, and keeps alive the celestial as well as the terrestrial portion of our nature.
Shall we prefer the cause to the effect, and the means to the end, or exalt the matter above the form, and the letter above the spirit? Does not the tissue exist for the sweetness of the rose, the marble for the beauty of the stature, and the mechanism for the illusion of the play?
The ”opposition” between science and poetry lies not in the object, but in our mode of regarding it. The scientific and the poetical spirit are complementary, as the inside to the outside of a garment, and if they seem to drive each other away it is because the mind cannot easily entertain and employ both together; but one is pa.s.sive when the other is active.
Keats drank ”confusion to Newton” for destroying the poetry of the rainbow by showing how the colours were elicited; but after all was Newton guilty? Why should a true knowledge of the cause destroy the poetry of an effect? Every effect must be produced somehow. The rainbow is not less beautiful in itself because I know that it is due to the refraction of light. The diamond loses none of its l.u.s.tre although chemistry has proved it to be carbon; the heavens are still glorious even if the stars are red-hot b.a.l.l.s.
But stones, carbon, and light are familiar commonplace things, and fraught with prosaic a.s.sociations.
True, and yet natural things are n.o.ble in themselves, and only vulgar in our usage. It is for us to purify and raise our thoughts. Instead of losing our interest in the universe because it is all of the same stuff, we should rather wonder at the miracle which has formed so rich a variety out of a common element.
But the mystery is gone, and the feelings and fancies which arose from it.
In exchange for the mystery we have truth, which excites other emotions and ideas. Moreover, the mystery is only pushed further back. We cannot tell what the elements really are; they will never be more than symbols to us, and all nature at bottom will ever remain a mystery to us: an organised illusion. Think, too, of the innumerable worlds amongst the stars, and the eternity of the past and future. Whether we look into the depths of s.p.a.ce beyond the reach of telescope and microscope, or backward and forward along the vistas of time, we shall find ourselves surrounded with an impenetrable mystery in which the imagination is free to rove.
Science, far from destroying, will foster and develop poetry. It is the part of the scientific to serve the poetical spirit by providing it with fresh matter. The poet will take the truth discovered by the man of science, and purify it from vulgar a.s.sociations, or stamp it with a beautiful and ideal form.
Consider the vast horizons opened to the vision of the poet by the investigations of science and the doctrine of evolution. At present the spirit of science is perhaps more active than the spirit of poetry, but we are pa.s.sing through an unsettled to a settled period. Tennyson was the voice of the transition; but the singer of evolution is to come, and after him the poet of truth.