[10] Yet even while I read the proof of this page there lies before me an article in the _Contemporary Review_ (July, 1905), in which Sir Oliver Lodge utters the old assumptions of science with childlike simplicity. "I want to urge," he says, "that my advocacy of science and scientific training is not really due to any wish to be able to travel faster or shout further round the earth, or to construct more extensive towns, or to consume more atmosphere and absorb more rivers, nor even to overcome disease, prolong human life, grow more corn, and cultivate to better advantage the kindly surface of the earth; though all these latter things will be 'added unto us' if we persevere in high aims. But it is none of these things which should be held out as the ultimate object and aim of humanity--the gain derivable from a genuine pursuit of truth of every kind; no, the ultimate aim can be expressed in many ways, but I claim that it is no less than to be able to comprehend what is the length and breadth and depth and height of this mighty universe, including man as part of it, and to know not man and nature alone, but to attain also some incipient comprehension of what the saints speak of as the love of God which passeth knowledge, and so to begin an entrance into the fulness of an existence beside which the joy even of a perfect earthly life is but as the happiness of a summer's day." The sentiment is beautiful, but what shall we say of the logic? To speak of attaining through _science_ a comprehension, even an incipient comprehension, of that which passeth _knowledge_, is to fall into that curious confusion of ideas to which the scientifically trained mind is subject when it goes beyond its own field. "Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me. Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast understanding." Has Sir Oliver read the Book of Job? THE END. * * * * * Shelburne Essays By Paul Elmer More 3 vols. Crown octavo. Sold separately. Net, $1.25. (By mail, $1.35) _Contents_ FIRST SERIES: A Hermit's Notes on Thoreau--The Solitude of Nathaniel Hawthorne--The Origins of Hawthorne and Poe--The Influence of Emerson--The Spirit of Carlyle--The Science of English Verse--Arthur Symonds: The Two Illusions--The Epic of Ireland--Two Poets of the Irish Movement--Tolstoy; or, The Ancient Feud between Philosophy and Art--The Religious Ground of Humanitarianism. SECOND SERIES: Elizabethan Sonnets--Shakespeare's Sonnets--Lafcadio Hearn--The First Complete Edition of Hazlitt--Charles Lamb--Kipling and FitzGerald--George Crabbe--The Novels of George Meredith--Hawthorne: Looking before and after--Delphi and Greek Literature--Nemesis; or, The Divine Envy.