This is always so. The man of affairs
works for the behoof and the use of poetry. Scientific facts
have never reached their proper function until they emerge
into new poetic relations established between man and man,
between man and God, or between man and nature."
Lanier's view of the theory of evolution is interesting.
"I have been studying science, biology, chemistry, evolution, and all,"
he writes to J. F. Kirk, June 15, 1880. "It pieces on, perfectly,
to those dreams which one has when one is a boy and wanders alone
by a strong running river, on a day when the wind is high but the sky clear.
These enormous modern generalizations fill me with such dreams again.
"But it is precisely at the beginning of that phenomenon
which is the underlying subject of this poem, `Individuality',
that the largest of such generalizations must begin,
and the doctrine of evolution when pushed beyond this point appears to me,
after the most careful examination of the evidence, to fail.
It is pushed beyond this point in its current application
to the genesis of species, and I think Mr. Huxley's last sweeping declaration
is clearly parallel to that of an enthusiastic dissecter who,
forgetting that his observations are upon dead bodies,
should build a physiological conclusion upon purely anatomical facts.
"For whatever can be proved to have been evolved, evolution seems to me
a noble and beautiful and true theory. But a careful search
has not shown me a single instance in which such proof as would stand
the first shot of a boy lawyer in a moot court, has been brought forward
in support of an actual case of species differentiation.
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