body to the spirit, as the shadow to the substance." [Footnote: _A
Defense of Poetry_.]

To this the philosopher may rejoin that poetry, far from making
discoveries beyond the bourne of philosophy, is a mere popularization, a
sugar-coating, of the philosopher's discoveries. Tolstoi contends,

True science investigates and brings to human perception such
truths and such knowledge as the people of a given time and
society consider most important. Art transmits these truths
from the region of perception to the region of emotion. And
thus a false activity of science inevitably causes a
correspondingly false activity of art. [Footnote: _What is
Art?_]

Such criticisms have sometimes incensed the poet till he has refused to
acknowledge any indebtedness to the dissecting hand of science, and has
pronounced the philosopher's attitude of mind wholly antagonistic to
poetry.

Philosophy will clip an angel's wings,
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
[Footnote: _Lamia_.]

Keats once complained. "Sleep in your intellectual crust!" [Footnote:
_A Poet's Epitaph_.]

Wordsworth contemptuously advised the philosopher, and not a few other
poets have felt that philosophy deadens life as a crust of ice deadens a
flowing stream. That reason kills poetry is the unoriginal theme of a