Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/177

Rh found them insufferably dull. On the other hand, he experienced great delight in reading novels, or in having them read to him, if they did not end unhappily, "against which a law should be passed." Many scientists, however, have held a different attitude toward poetry. J. S. Mill, although not a scientist in the strict meaning of the term, possessed a severely logical mind. When his premises were correct his conclusions have rarely been called in question. In his autobiography he says, when speaking of Wordsworth:

Quite as remarkable both for what it was as for what it was not was the mind of William E. Gladstone. He is said to have been the only English statesman who could make a speech in Parliament two or three hours long crammed with statistics and bristling with figures yet hold the attention of his auditors to the end. Some of his contributions to the history of ancient Greece are considered to be of lasting value. On the other hand, in his controversies with Huxley and in his theological writings generally he displays such short-sightedness and such an obliquity of intellectual vision that the reader is sometimes prompted to ask himself whether Gladstone the statesman and Gladstone the theologian are the same person. Horace observed long ago that you might drive out nature by violent means, but it would always return. Although Darwin's mind seemed to be almost pure intellect, he was a man of "kindly disposition, of strong feelings and wide sympathies. Many anecdotes are told of the ways by which his grandchildren tyrannized over him. Herbert Spencer was unable to suppress feelings of indignation when he witnessed an act of cruelty. He was powerless to explain this emotional state of mind and admitted that he could not help it. It is not putting the case too strong to say that every forward step in the march of human progress has been due to the constructive or creative imagination. In the man of routine it is very feeble, so feeble that it can hardly be said to exist. Columbus imagined the existence of a continent at some distance westward from the Atlantic coast as he knew it because he saw on the shores of Portugal branches of trees, two human corpses and other objects which he was convinced were not of European provenience. Many other persons had seen similar objects before him; but they did not set the imagination of the observers to work. In addition he had doubtless read the views of the Greeks as feebly reflected in a few Roman authors affirming that the earth is a sphere. Had his imagination been of the fanciful order he