philosopher refrain from charging them with falsehood? The poet's
hamadryad and naiad, what are they, indeed, but cobwebby fictions, which
must be brushed away if ideal truth is to be revealed? Critics of the
poet like to point out that Shakespeare frankly confessed,

Most true it is that I have looked on truth
Askance and strangely,

and that a renegade artist of the nineteenth century admitted, "Lying,
the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of Art."
[Footnote: Oscar Wilde, _The Decay of Lying_.] If poets complain that
all charms fly
At the mere touch of cold philosophy,
[Footnote: _Lamia_.]

are they not admitting that their vaunted revelations are mere ghosts of
distorted facts, and that they themselves are merely accomplished liars?

In his rebuttal the poet makes a good case for himself. He has
identified the philosopher with the scientist, he says, and rightly, for
the philosopher, the seeker for truth alone, can never get beyond the
realm of science. His quest of absolute truth will lead him, first, to
the delusive rigidity of scientific classification, then, as he tries to
make his classification complete, it will topple over like a lofty tower
of child's blocks, into the original chaos of things.

What! the philosopher may retort, the poet speaks thus of truth, who has
just exalted himself as the supreme truth-teller, the seer? But the poet
answers that his truth is not in any sense identical with that of the
scientist and the philosopher. Not everything that exists is true for