LITERATURE'AND THE NEW LEARNING.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 193, 9 May 1908, Page 12

LITERATURE'AND THE NEW LEARNING.

.J.'Tho.great creative. books, the novels, the dramas; the poems; 1 are not- always : the re-', flex of tho thoughtYbf their ago, and sometini'es they "catch;. Very- faintly and ineffectively the ideas' which are. thrilling through . the' 'atmosphere about _ them," j writes Mr. Sidney Low in ;a most interesting article in tho "Standard" on" '"Literature and the New Learhirig."'- ' ''H6\v"jnuch, for example, of the early' or' the mid-Victorian 'literature , will 'convey to'the reader: of tile future so much as a hint -of " the' momentous , scicntific movement of th'at dynamic, period? 1 \ ; ■' . "It'may'.bs that 'in. the future, when the true perspective' .view is "atfaihedf.it -will be said, that the past - twenty years: have added more'to the actual' knowledge of the universe than. any t\vo."d'ecades in; recorded' history. Discoveries'greater than those of Newton, experiments more audacious; by. far than those of Davy and Faraday, speculations arid generalisations' more profound and searching than those of Descartes, Laplace, and DaTwin have been, recorded since the 'eighties of the last century; ! "To say that new worlds have been opened to us by Becquerel, Lord Kelvin, M. and Mmei Curie, Sir 'William Ramsay j Lord Rayleigh,' 'Prof; Crookes, and Sir Oliver- Lodge is to convey but a faint impression of. the truth. Under the daring touch of these scientists tho. old worlds have been - torn to pieces and; rccbnstructeilV'.spaco', matter; force, energy,' all that we"knowall,that we feel, all that we touch; all that mankind has regarded as tho most, stable realities', have been resolved into their elements,., melted away,' changcd into 'tho airy fabric of a vision,' deprived in some cases of existonco altogether.' The wholo theory of tho universo'has.had to bo recast, and scientific conception? which for generations' 'have "-'been accepted as irrefragablo have had to be abandoned. Can one doubt that this' romance of tho elements, this cosmic drama of'forco and motion, and all that thoso things imply and involve, aro of the stuff of which literature might bo mado? If wo are to have another Wordsworth or another Shelley, they will assuredly bo deeply conscious of the New Learning in every fibre of their poetical boirig."