"We build," he said, "on elemental things!"
And paused to glance around the silent class.
"On facts well ascertained which insight brings,
"And which in due development must pass
"From the first phase, remote, removed,
"To the Effect. Thus, link by link, we trace
"The lengthening chain of Verity, full proved
"By Knowledge, Reason, Logic, each in place."
It seemed conclusive to us students then.
The man's prestige had weight. Authority
Made him for us above all other men;
He was the head of our academy.
His calm assumption and incisive way,
Admitting no alternative nor doubt,
As he intoned his long familiar lay,
Made his pronouncements clear as if cut out
Of crystal, cold with mathematic test,
Through which he viewed complacently the span
And limit of all scientific quest,
Quite heedless of the growing range of man.
His narrow field so finished and complete,
His standards and his logic's hampering line
Look small where now the long perspectives meet,
Converging in a new horizon's shine.
All this was years ago. What would he say,
I wonder, if he could revisit us
And, with the knowledge of the present day,
See space and pain reduced to minimus,
Electric currents hand in hand with steam,
Men borne in ships across the trackless air,
The widening story of the earth's old scheme
Told in its strata, and, with arduous care,
The age of man thrust back unfathomed years,
New elements, a new chronology
And growing lore that year by year appears
To show how distant is finality?
It sets my fancy roving and I try
In idle hours to think what may befall.
Naught seems impossible, no thought too high,
No dream too mad, to realise it all.
What, for example, is the human mind?
Whence comes it, great or small, at some man's birth?
A fool's or sage's, base or all refined!
What holds it till his body turns to earth?
And whither goes it with the failing breath?
And is the Aura's essence to remain
Ever elusive at the hour of death,
To perish or another home attain?
Or, with close knowledge of man's growing germ,
Shall we not train it and direct its course,
As now we cultivate the floral sperm,
And simple weeds to complex beauty force?
Life is a thing of phases manifold,
By shades diminishing from high to low,
Man, protoplasm, beast, all we are told,
To perish in an equal overthrow.
Our view of life at best is incomplete.
We judge by its effect and action, blind
To its real essence, as to that we meet,
Acting unseen, when wire to wire we bind.
Think of what might be, once this secret known,
Full knowledge of Life's spark, and with the power
To rescue from Death's dark and silent zone
The souls of some great men whose natures tower
Above their fellows and can ill be spared
From some great task far-reaching and benign.
I hear a reader say: "This man has dared
"To claim for us an attribute divine!
"Our times are in God's hands." And I reply:
We do not hesitate to take a life,
The claims of social law to satisfy,
And punish men whose minds with crime are rife.
What then more fitting, given the knowledge there,
To lengthen lives that worthy ends fulfil,
And measure by new standards just and fair
The worth of life as it is good or ill?
Have we exhausted chemistry's domain?
Squeezed dry the elements we say we know?
And does the spinning universe contain
No more our theories to overthrow?
How far does gravitation serve our needs--
The force that keeps each planet in its place,
Resistless, constant, yet with varying speeds,
For ever acting in unbounded space?
Some day perhaps pent man will learn to brave
An alien atmosphere, and, from afar,
Of weight and distance master, not the slave,
Bring us new wisdom from some distant star.