There is, in truth, no organic distinction between scientific and poetic genius. The difference lies merely in their combinations of thought, which are concrete and ideal in the one case, abstract and real in the other. Both employ analysis at starting; both alike aim ultimately at synthesis. The erroneous belief in their incompatibility proceeds merely from the absolute spirit of metaphysical philosophy, which so often leads us to mistake a transitory phase for the permanent order. If it is the fact, as appears, that they have never been actually combined in the same person, it is merely because the two functions cannot be called into action at the same moment. A state of society that calls for great philosophical efforts cannot be favourable to poetry, because it involves a new elaboration of first principles; and it is essential to Art that these should have been already fixed. This is the reason why in history we find periods of esthetic growth succeeding periods of great philosophical change, but never co-existing. If we look at instances of great minds who were never able to find their proper sphere, we see at once that had they risen at some other time, they might have cultivated either poetry or philosophy, as the case might be, with equal success. Diderot would no doubt have been a great poet in a time more favourable to art; and Goethe, under different political influences, might have been an eminent philosopher. All scientific discoverers in whom the inductive faculty has been more active than the deductive, have given manifest proof of poetic capacity. Whether the powers of invention take an abstract or a concrete direction, whether they are employed in discovering truth or in idealizing it, the cerebral function is always essentially the same. The difference is merely in the objects aimed at; and as these alternate according to the circumstances of the time, they cannot both be pursued simultaneously. The remarkably synthetic character of Buffon’s genius may be looked on historically as an instance of fusion of the scientific and esthetic spirit. Bossuet is even a more striking instance of a mind equally capable of the deepest philosophy and of the sublimest poetry, had the circumstances of his life given him a more definite impulse in either direction.