There are two eminent illustrations of this fact, it is said, in the immortal Sir Isaac Newton and John Milton, whose names are equally historic and illustrious for their learning and culture. For it is said that Newton could not appreciate "Paradise Lost," and Milton could see nothing in "The Principia." This was not to the discredit of either of these books, nor was it a reflection upon the technical learning of either man. Neither was attuned to the message which the other brought to humanity and it proves that in order to apprehend truth in any quarter a man must be sympathetically disposed toward it. Milton had no mind for mathematics, nor Newton for poetry. So the wisest philosophers like Herbert Spencer may go to religion and find nothing there but the abstruce and unknowable. Spencer's mind dwells on the phenomena of matter and material senses only. It is said nearly every great thinker has some central thought fixed firmly in his mind. The central thought of Plato is the theory of ideas--the assertion of the apparitional character of the seemingly real world. The central thought of Pascal is that of human intelligence confronting the universe and strangled by its inexorable tragedies. The central thought of Schopenhauer is the absurdity of life, and the central thought of Herbert Spencer is the evolution of the material universe. PART SECOND Sleep, death and oblivion are things that mock; Sleep in dreams; death and oblivion in the grave; And yet we are not mocked. We only walk Amid realities that bind us like a slave. Sleep soothes and cheers; death grimly reaps and slays. It makes earth but a tomb--its house of revelry; It stalks amid life's dark and brightest ways And takes its victims. All are 'neath its slavery. With chilling frosts it nips life's brightest flowers, And with pale faces and a gasp they go, And vaguely trust to bloom 'neath other bowers, Where death's grim hand will never blast them so. All hearts beat to music and measure, Like songs of the spheres as they roll, And from dreamland's far mystical treasure Come songbirds that sing to the soul; Where the glint of the gold in fair tresses Hide a face that we never have seen, And the infinite hope that caresses Kisses joys that we never may glean. For the wealth of the world is ideal; There is bliss in the beauty of rhyme, And the thoughts of the soul are the real, Outlasting the cycles of time. And the soul is the diamond eternal Where spirit and power are one, Brushing dross from its splendor supernal As dust from the eye of the sun.