As an instrument for reconciling Man's inward harmony with the great
outer harmony of the Universe, Poetry is notoriously imperfect. Men have
tried others therefore--others that appeared at first sight more
promising, such as Music and Mathematics--yet on the whole to their
disappointment.

Take Mathematics. Numbers inhere in all harmony. By numbers harmony can
be expressed far more severely than by Poetry, and so successfully up to
a point, that poets have borrowed the very word to dignify their poor
efforts. They "lisp in numbers"--or so they say: and the curious may
turn to the _Parmenides_, to Book vii. of _The Republic_ and others of
the _Dialogues_ and note how Plato, hunting on the trail of many
distinguished predecessors, pursues Mathematics up to the point where,
as a means of interpreting to Man the Universal harmony, Mathematics,
like Philosophy, inevitably breaks down. Mathematics, an abstract
science, breaks down just because it is abstract and in no way personal:
because though it may calculate and time and even weigh parts of the
greater Universe, it cannot, by defect of its nature, bring its
discoveries back to bear on the other harmony of Man. It is impersonal
and therefore nescient of his need. Though by such a science he gain the
whole world, it shall not profit a man who misses from it his own soul.

Philosophy, too, fails us over this same crux of "personality"; not by
ignoring it, but by clinging with obstinacy to the wrong end of the
stick. The quarrel between Philosophy and Poetry is notorious and
inveterate: and at ninety-nine points in the hundred Philosophy has the
better of the dispute; as the Fox in the fable had ninety-nine ways of
evading the hounds, against the Cat's solitary one. But the Cat could
climb a tree.