Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/62

32 Aryan artist is born with a more analytic vision than that of the Orient; if not, that he does instinctively resist certain inclinations to draw lines just as they appear to him. But this natural resistance unquestionably was long ago reinforced by his study of the laws of perspective. The generally truer and more effective rendering of outline and shadow by Western masters cannot be denied, and furnishes an example of the aid which scientific analysis can render to the artist. In just the same way, we may see, empirical knowledge is steadily becoming a part of the poet's equipment, and, I have no doubt, is by inherited transmission giving him at birth an ability to receive from phenomena more scientifically correct impressions. For his purposes, nevertheless, the portrayal of things as they seem conveys a truth just as important as that other truth which the man of analysis and demonstration imparts to the intellect. It is the methods that are antithetical.

The poet's other function, which the scientist Discovery through Imagination does not avoid, but which research alone through Imagination, does not confer upon him, is that of seizing the abstract truth of things whether observed or discovered. It has been given out, though I do not vouch for it, that Edison obtains some of his ideas for practical invention from the airy flights of imagination taken by writers of fiction. In any case, it is clear that with respect to inventive surmise the poet is in advance: the investigator, if he would