ble authority; he examines what claim they have to be trusted; he asks whether things which they pronounce alike are really alike, and whether things which they pronounce different are really different; and often finds that he must answer, no! The result of such examination, as at present understood, is that the organs of sense do indeed give us information about external effects produced on them, but convey those effects to our consciousness in a totally different form, so that the character of a sensuous perception depends not so much on the properties of the object perceived as on those of the organ by which we receive the information.
We see that science has arrived at an estimate of the senses very different from that which was present to the poet's mind. And Newton's assertion that white was composed of all the colors of the spectrum was the first germ of the scientific view which has subsequently been developed. For at that time there were none of those galvanic observations which paved the way to a knowledge of the functions of the nerves in the production of sensations. Natural philosophers asserted that white, to the eye the simplest and purest of all our sensations of color, was compounded of less pure and complex materials. It seems to have flashed upon the poet's mind that all his principles were unsettled by the results of this assertion, and that is why the hypothesis seems to him so unthinkable, so ineffably absurd. We must look upon his "Theory of Color" as a forlorn hope, as a desperate attempt to rescue from the attacks of science the belief in the direct truth of our sensations. And this will account for the enthusiasm with which he strives to elaborate and to defend his theory, for the passionate irritability with which he attacks his opponent, for the overweening importance which he attaches to these researches in comparison with his other achievements, and for his inaccessibility to conviction or compromise.
In conclusion, it must be obvious to every one that the theoretical part of the "Theory of Color" is not natural philosophy at all; at the same time we can, to a certain extent, see that the poet wanted to introduce a totally different method into the study of Nature, and more or less understand how he came to do so. Poetry is concerned solely with the "beautiful show" which makes it possible to contemplate the ideal; how that show is produced Is a matter of indifference. Even Nature is, in the poet's eyes, but the sensible expression of the spiritual. The natural philosopher, on the other hand, tries to discover the levers, the cords, and the pulleys, which work behind the scenes, and shift them. Of course, the sight of the machinery spoils the beautiful show, and therefore the poet would gladly talk it out of existence, and, ignoring cords and pulleys as the chimeras of a pedant's brain, he would have us believe that the scenes shift themselves, or are governed by the idea of the drama. And it is just characteristic of Goethe that he, and he alone among poets, must needs break a lance with natural philosophers. Other poets are either so entirely carried away by the fire of their enthusiasm that they do not trouble themselves about the disturbing influences of the outer world, or else they rejoice in the triumphs of mind over matter, even on that unpropitious battle-field. But Goethe, whom no intensity of subjective feeling could blind to the realities around him, can not rest satisfied until he has stamped reality itself with the image and superscription of poetry. This constitutes the peculiar beauty of his poetry, and at the same time fully accounts for his resolute hostility to the machinery that every moment threatens to disturb his poetic repose, and for his determination to attack the enemy in his own camp.
But we can not triumph over the machinery of matter by ignoring it; we can triumph over it only by subordinating it to the aims of our moral intelligence. We must familiarize ourselves with its levers and pulleys, fatal though it be to poetic contemplation, in order to be able to govern them after our own will, and therein lies the complete justification of physical investigation, and its vast importance for the advance of human civilization."EVOLUTION ADMITTED, WHAT THEN?"
It is gratifying to note an obvious subsidence of alarm on the part of eminent divines in regard to the acceptance of evolution doctrines, accompanied by the bolder enunciation of rational views respecting religion. Dr. E. O. Haven, Chancellor of the University of Syracuse, and now a Methodist bishop, sends a communication to a leading religious journal under the above title, which is full of significant foreshadowings that are worthy of notice.
Dr. Haven utters a very important truth when he says: "Men are prone to associate their religion with its drapery. This becomes obsolete and must
