The Voice of Science in Nineteenth-Century Literature: Representative Prose and Verse
Science
The Voice of Science in Nineteenth-Century Literature: Representative Prose and Verse
English literature -- 19th century; Literature, Modern; Science; Science in literature
We can afford to allow the limitation, if we know it is the meter of the
growing man. We can stand against Fate, as children stand up against the
wall in their father's house, and notch their height from year to year.
But when the boy grows to man, and is master of the house, he pulls down
that wall, and builds a new and bigger. 'Tis only a question of time.
Every brave youth is in training to ride, and rule this dragon. His
science is to make weapons and wings of these passions and retarding
forces. Now whether, seeing these two things, fate and power, we are
permitted to believe in unity? The bulk of mankind believe in two gods.
They are under one dominion here in the house, as friend and parent, in
social circles, in letters, in art, in love, in religion: but in
mechanics, in dealing with steam and climate, in trade, in politics, they
think they come under another; and that it would be a practical blunder
to transfer the method and way of working of one sphere into the other.
What good, honest, generous men at home, will be wolves and foxes on
change! What pious men in the parlor will vote for what reprobates at the
polls! To a certain point, they believe themselves the care of a
Providence. But in a steamboat, in an epidemic, in war, they believe a
malignant energy rules.
But relation and connection are not somewhere and sometimes, but
everywhere and always. The divine order does not stop where their sight
stops. The friendly power works on the same rules, in the next farm and
the next planet. But where they have not experience, they run against it,
and hurt themselves. Fate, then, is a name for facts not yet passed under
the fire of thought--for causes which are unpenetrated.
But every jet of chaos which threatens to exterminate us is convertible by
intellect into wholesome force. Fate is unpenetrated causes. The water
drowns ship and sailor, like a grain of dust. But learn to swim, trim your
bark, and the wave which drowned it will be cloven by it, and carry it,
like its own foam, a plume and a power. The cold is inconsiderate of
persons, tingles your blood, freezes a man like a dew-drop. But learn to
skate, and the ice will give you a graceful, sweet, and poetic motion. The
cold will brace your limbs and brain to genius, and make you foremost men
of time. Cold and sea will train an imperial Saxon race, which nature
cannot bear to lose, and, after cooping it up for a thousand years in
yonder England, gives a hundred Englands, a hundred Mexicos. All the
bloods it shall absorb and domineer: and more than Mexicos--the secrets of
water and steam, the spasms of electricity, the ductility of metals, the
chariot of the air, the ruddered balloon, are awaiting you.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account