“But, friends,
  Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise
  From outward things, whate’er you may believe.”

There is room and need for the higher synthesis of philosophy and poetry, as well as for the more palpable and, at the same time, more narrow colligating conceptions of the systematic sciences.  The quantitative relations between material objects, which are investigated by mathematics and physics, do not exhaust the realm of the knowable, so as to leave no place for the poet’s, or the philosopher’s view of the world.  The scientific investigator who, like Mr. Tyndall, so far forgets the limitations of his province as to use his natural data as premises for religious or irreligious conclusions, is as illogical as the popular preacher, who attacks scientific conclusions because they are not consistent with his theological presuppositions.  Looking only at their primary aspects, we cannot say that religious presuppositions and the scientific interpretation of facts are either consistent or inconsistent:  they are simply different.  Their harmony or discord can come only when the higher principles of philosophy have been fully developed, and when the departmental ideas of the various sciences are organized into a view of the world as a whole.  And this is a task which has not as yet been accomplished.  The forces from above and below have not met.  When they do meet, they will assuredly find that they are friends, and not foes.  For philosophy can articulate its supreme conception only by interaction with the sciences; and, on the other hand, the progress of science, and the effectiveness of its division of labour, are ultimately conditioned by its sensitiveness to the hints, given by poets and philosophers, of those wider principles in virtue of which the world is conceived as a unity.  There are many, indeed, who cannot see the wood for the trees, as there are others who cannot see the trees for the wood.  Carlyle cared nothing though science were able to turn a sunbeam on its axis; Ruskin sees little in the advance of invention except more slag-hills.  And scientific men have not been slow to return with interest the scorn of the moralists.  But a more comprehensive view of the movement of human knowledge will show that none labour in vain.  For its movement is that of a thing which grows! and in growth there is always movement towards both unity and difference.  Science, in pursuing truth into greater and greater detail, is constrained by its growing consciousness of the unlimited wealth of its material, to divide and isolate its interests more and more; and thus, at the same time, the need for the poets and philosophers is growing deeper, their task is becoming more difficult of achievement, and a greater triumph in so far as it is achieved.  Both science and philosophy are working towards a more concrete view of the world as an articulated whole.  If we cannot quite say with Browning that “poets never dream,” we may yet admit with gratitude that their dreams are an inspiration.