en truths in essential
harmony with the soul of man. He is always returning to unity. The man
of science, on the contrary, always beginning with the variable and
contingent facts of this world, is often lost in the wildering whirl of
the ever-moving and unceasing variety around him, finding it hard to
link his widely severed facts with the Supreme Unity, which gives to all
its reason for being, its true worth. Variety and Unity--the created and
the Creator!

It is almost universally believed that there is more truth in science
than in poetry--a vulgar error refuted both by reason and common sense.
Poetry, being the expression of the necessary with the Absolute, must,
in consequence, be nearer truth than science, which has, for the most
part, its starting point in contingent, variable, and fugitive facts,
and either succeeds in seizing in an uncertain manner or fails to seize
at all the one Idea imbosomed in such a multitudinous array of facts.
The whole creation is but the visible expression of the laws of our
unseen God: the man of science mounts from the visible fact to the
unseen Idea, while the poet descends from the idea to the fact, thus
humbly imitating the work of creation.

It was man who introduced disorder into the finite: regenerated through
the incarnation of the Divine, he must labor with all his powers to
restore it to its pristine order. He must remodel the physical world by
his industry, and task his intellect in the paths of science, that the
truths of nature may be developed, that the well-being of his body, his
material nature may be properly cared for: by his courage and endurance
he must alleviate all wrongs, and set free the oppressed; he must
elevate his soul and ennoble his heart by a grateful attention to his
religious duties; he must increase and multiply his happy and helpful
relations with his brother men by a faithful and devout culture of the
fine arts.

The Beautiful does not address itself principally _to_ the senses; but,
by its exhibition of eternal laws, _through_ them to the soul, for the
_manifestation of the Divine attributes is the mystic Heart of all true
Beauty_.'

To give an example of the different appeals made by science and by art,
let us open alternately the pages of the poet and savant, let us take
some familiar thing, for instance, a common flower, and see what they
will tell us of its character, relations, and worth. The botanist notes
the distinctions of the flower