"
Thank Heaven, we have not yet come to think that the highest
form of wisdom is enshrined in the _sesquipedalia monstra_ of
chemical formulae, still less in the extreme abstractions of
mathematics. Not that such formulae have not a beauty, and
even a Mysticism of their own; their harmfulness comes from
the exclusiveness of their claims when they are advanced as an
adequate description (sometimes explanation!) of existence at
large and of life in particular. The biological formulas, based on
mathematics, at which Le Dantec, for instance, has arrived, if
taken at their author's valuation, and if consistently applied,
would make the sublimest poetry to be greater folly than the
babble of a child. The nature-mystic may, or may not, allow
them a relative value according as he considers them to be valid
or invalid abstractions from observed facts; but he knows that
the most valid of them are exceedingly limited in their scope
and superficial in their bearing: and it remains a standing
wonder to him that any trained intellect can fail to realise their
miserable inadequacy, in view of the full rich current of living
experience.
One of the chief merits of genuine nature-poetry is that it keeps
us in close and constant touch with sense experience, and at the
same time brings home nature's inner life and meaning. It is not
a mere string of metaphors and symbols based on accidental
associations of ideas, but an expression and interpretation of
definite sensations and intuitions which result from the action of
man's physical environment upon his deepest and most delicate
faculties.
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