even soar?" This involves no denial of science's absolute right to her
own field--the "texture of the elements which compose" the rose, and
the "secrets of anatomy." But it is a justified assertion that this
field of science is not all of reality, and that what the "owl-winged
faculty of calculation" can reach is not all of truth.
What is a sunset? Science sets forth the answer in tables where the
light waves that compose the colors are counted and the planetary
movements that bring on the dusk are all explained. Poetry answers in
a way how different!
"I've dreamed of sunsets when the sun, supine,
Lay rocking on the ocean like a god,
And threw his weary arms far up the sky,
And with vermilion-tinted fingers,
Toyed with the long tresses of the evening star."[4]
Is one of these answers more true than the other? Rather it is absurd
to compare their truth; they are not contradictory; they approach the
same fact with diverse interests, and seek in it different aspects of
reality. Each has its rights in its own field. And so far is it from
being true that science has a clear case in favor of its own superior
importance, that Höffding, the philosopher, remarks, "It well may be
that poetry gives more perfect expression to the highest Reality than
any scientific concept can ever do."
Any great fact is too manifold in its meanings to be exhausted by a
single method of approach. If one would know the Bible thoroughly, he
must understand the rules of grammar. Were one to make grammar his
exclusive specialty, the Bible to him, so far as he held strictly to
his science, would be nouns and verbs, adverbs, adjectives, and
prepositions, and the law-abiding relationships between them. This
mere grammarian would know by such a method one aspect of the Bible,
but how little of the Book would that aspect be! No rules of grammar
can interpret the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians or explain
the story of the Cross. The facts and laws of the Book's language a
grammarian could know, but the beauty and the soul of it, the
innermost transforming truth of it, would be unperceived.
So life is too rich and various to be exhausted by any one approach.
Science seeks facts and arranges them in systems of cause and effect.
Poetry sees these bare facts adorned with beauty, she suffuses them
with her preferences and her appreciations. Religion sees the whole
gathered up into spiritual unity, filled with moral purpose and good
will, and in this faith finds peace and power. There need be no
conflict between these various approaches; they are complementary, not
antagonistic; and no man sees all the truth by any one of them alone.
So a chemist might come to a spring to analyze it; a painter to
rejoice in its beauties and reproduce them on his canvas; and a man
athirst might come to drink and live. Shall they quarrel because they
do not all come alike? Let them rather see how partial is the
experience of each without the others!
III
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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