Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/702

686 corresponding part of ours. For it is the attribute of the true poet to penetrate the secret of those mysterious influences which we all unknowingly experience; and, having discovered this to himself, to bring others, by the power he thus wields, into the like sympathetic relation with Nature, evoking with skilful touch the varied response of the Soul's finest chords, heightening its joys, assuaging its griefs, and elevating its aspirations. While, then, the artist aims to picture what he sees in Nature, it is the object of the poet to represent what he feels in Nature; and to each true poet Nature is what he individually finds in her.

The philosopher's interpretation of Nature seems less individual than that of the artist or the poet, because it is based on facts which any one may verify, and is elaborated by reasoning processes of which all admit the validity. He looks at the universe as a vast book lying open before him, of which he has in the first place to learn the characters, then to master the language, and finally to apprehend the ideas which that language conveys. In that book there are many chapters, treating of different subjects; and, as life is too short for any one man to grasp the whole, the scientific interpretation of this book comes to be the work of many intellects, differing not merely in the range but also in the character of their powers. But while there are "diversities of gifts," there is "the same spirit." While each takes his special direction, the general method of study is the same for all. And it is a testimony alike to the truth of that method and to the unity of Nature that there is an ever-increasing tendency toward agreement among those who use it aright—temporary differences of interpretation being removed, sometimes by a more complete mastery of her language, sometimes by a better apprehension of her ideas—and lines of pursuit which had seemed entirely distinct or even widely divergent being found to lead at last to one common goal. And it is this agreement which gives rise to the general belief—in many, to the confident assurance—that the scientific interpretation of Nature represents her not merely as she seems but as she really is.

When, however, we carefully examine the foundation of that assurance, we find reason to distrust its security; for it can be shown to be no less true of the scientific conception of Nature than it is of the artistic or the poetic, that it is a representation framed by the mind itself out of the materials supplied by the impressions which external objects make upon the senses, so that, to each man of science, Nature is what he individually believes her to be. And that belief will rest on very different bases, and will have very unequal values, in different departments of science. Thus in what are commonly known as the "exact" sciences, of which astronomy may be taken as the type, the data afforded by precise methods of observation can be made the basis of reasoning, in every step of which the mathematician feels the fullest assurance of certainty; and the final deduction is justified