As we have above asserted, Science is necessary not only for the most successful production, but also for the full appreciation, of the fine arts.  In what consists the greater ability of a man than of a child to perceive the beauties of a picture; unless it is in his more extended knowledge of those truths in nature or life which the picture renders?  How happens the cultivated gentleman to enjoy a fine poem so much more than a boor does; if it is not because his wider acquaintance with objects and actions enables him to see in the poem much that the boor cannot see?  And if, as is here so obvious, there must be some familiarity with the things represented, before the representation can be appreciated, then, the representation can be completely appreciated only when the things represented are completely understood.  The fact is, that every additional truth which a word of art expresses, gives an additional pleasure to the percipient mind—­a pleasure that is missed by those ignorant of this truth.  The more realities an artist indicates in any given amount of work, the more faculties does he appeal to; the more numerous ideas does he suggest; the more gratification does he afford.  But to receive this gratification the spectator, listener, or reader, must know the realities which the artist has indicated; and to know these realities is to have that much science.

And now let us not overlook the further great fact, that not only does science underlie sculpture, painting, music, poetry, but that science is itself poetic.  The current opinion that science and poetry are opposed, is a delusion.  It is doubtless true that as states of consciousness, cognition and emotion tend to exclude each other.  And it is doubtless also true that an extreme activity of the reflective powers tends to deaden the feelings; while an extreme activity of the feelings tends to deaden the reflective powers:  in which sense, indeed, all orders of activity are antagonistic to each other.  But it is not true that the facts of science are unpoetical; or that the cultivation of science is necessarily unfriendly to the exercise of imagination and the love of the beautiful.  On the contrary, science opens up realms of poetry where to the unscientific all is a blank.  Those engaged in scientific researches constantly show us that they realise not less vividly, but more vividly, than others, the poetry of their subjects.  Whoso will dip into Hugh Miller’s works of geology, or read Mr. Lewes’s Sea-side Studies, will perceive that science excites poetry rather than extinguishes it.  And he who contemplates the life of Goethe, must see that the poet and the man of science can co-exist in equal activity.  Is it not, indeed, an absurd and almost a sacrilegious belief, that the more a man studies Nature the less he reveres it?  Think you that a drop of water, which to the vulgar eye is but a drop of water, loses anything in the eye of the physicist who knows that its elements are