'Poets! Why should poets be afraid of modern science? Believe me, there was never a greater mistake than to fancy modern science can hurt poetry. In fact, it is opening up new fields for the poet. What gigantic solar landscapes are unfolded to view! Fancy--for you have the temperament of a poet, if you have not the art--fancy gold and iron now blazing in the sun, and mountains of flaming hydrogen springing two thousand miles into space! Fancy the history of the world as now read by science, compared with the history of the world read by our grandfathers! Why, sir, they lived on the crust of the earth, with only a day and a night of history revealed to them, with souls that only wondered at the stars, and eyes that saw no further into earth than a mole will burrow. In one hundred years we have cloven the earth in two, and spelled out of its rind the syllables of its prodigious history. With the prism we have built scaffolding among the fixed stars, to serve for those who come after us as platforms of observation. Do you recollect those familiar words spoken by Newton, not long before he laid down the wisdom and knowledge of eighty-three years in the grave? "I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble, or a prettier shell, than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me." Newton was right. The vulgar call this a piece of sublime modesty. Not at all. It was sublimer than any mere personal human virtue; it was truth. Reverting to what I said a few moments ago about the poetic faculty and science, are not these words I have quoted poetical?' 'Yes; but Newton would not have fitted into the science of our time,' said Osborne, with an uneasy look. 'Why not? Of course he would. He would lead us now as he had led before. Why do you think not?' 'Did he not once reproach someone for free-thinking?' Suddenly all the animation went out of Parkinson's face, all the alertness left his figure, and he lay back in his chair with the air of fatigue. 'Yes,' he answered spiritlessly, 'he reproached Dr Halley for expressing some free-thinking opinions.' 'What do you suppose Newton would have done in the face of modern science?' 'Conformed.' 'To religion?' 'No; to science.' For a few moments there was silence between the two men. Parkinson lay back in his chair, inert, relaxed, his head drooped upon his chest, his hand and arm hanging down over the side of his chair. From the cigar held in that hand a thin bent thread of blue smoke ascended, and when it reached the level of the men's eyes, waved and broke and melted into air. Osborne sat grasping the arms of his chair with fingers that whitened with the force he used. He was looking with a dull deadly fixity of fear at Parkinson. 'You think,' said Osborne slowly, deliberately, 'that the poet need not fear the advance of science?' 'I do.'