Page:The Harveian oration ; delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, June 26th, 1879 (IA b24976465).pdf/51

 Of course it is possible that a man, deeply engaged in a scientific analysis of a material object, may have his eyes shut to the sublimity and grandeur of form, or beauty in every shape, and be so dead to the more sacred feelings of our nature as even, as the poet says, to botanise upon his mother's grave, but this is owing to the man's idiosyncracy; his work does not harden his heart for we may quote sufficient examples to shew there is no antagonism between the man of science and the man of imagination. Have we no artists, no poets, no musicians in our own ranks?

It may be truc that the majority of persons arc born Aristotelians or Platonists, but, nevertheless, it were not difficult to point to men most eminent in science who would not have disgraced any department of art. But fortunately we can find some of the greatest geniuses whom the world has produced, who have been able to seize upon all the attributes of nature in order to raise their imagina- tion to the highest pitch. What an example of this was Goëthe; he could study the meaning of the intermaxillary bone, of the vertebræ, dissect a flower, or analyse a ray of light, yet, withal, he could conceive nature in all its profundity and