‘How, shall our great discoverers obtain From sense and reason less than these obtained, Though far misled? Shall men for whom our age Unbaffled powers of vision hath prepared, To explore the world without and world within, Be joyless as the blind? Ambitious souls— Whom earth at this late season hath produced To regulate the moving spheres, and weigh The planets in the hollow of their hand; And they who rather dive than soar, whose pains Have solved the elements, or analysed The thinking principle—shall they in fact Prove a degraded race? And what avails Renown, if their presumption make them such? Inquire of ancient wisdom; go, demand Of mighty nature, if ’twas ever meant That we should pry far off, yet be unraised; That we should pore, and dwindle as we pore, Viewing all objects unremittingly In disconnection dead and spiritless; And still dividing and dividing still Break down all grandeur, still unsatisfied With the perverse attempt, while littleness May yet become more little; waging thus An impious warfare with the very life Of our own souls! And if indeed there be An all-pervading spirit, upon whom Our dark foundations rest, could he design, That this magnificent effect of power, The earth we tread, the sky which we behold By day, and all the pomp which night reveals, That these—and that superior mystery, Our vital frame, so fearfully devised, And the dread soul within it—should exist Only to be examined, pondered, searched, Probed, vexed, and criticised—to be prized No more than as a mirror that reflects To proud Self-love her own intelligence?’