Because philosophy admits this element of personality, it
is nearer to art than science is. Yet some men of science, like James
and Huxley, have made literature out of science because they could not
help putting into their writings something of their passionate interest
in the things they discovered and described.
The, necessity in art for the expression of value is, I think, the
principal difference between art and science, rather than, as Croce
[Footnote: _Estetica_, quarta edizione, p.27; English translation.
p.36.] supposes, the limitation of art to the expression of the
individual and of Science to the expression of the concept. For, on
the one hand, science may express the individual; and, on the other
hand, art may express the concept. The geographer, for example,
describes and makes maps of particular regions of the earth's surface;
the astronomer studies the individual sun and moon. Poets like Dante,
Lucretius, Shakespeare, and Goethe express the most universal concepts
of ethics or metaphysics. But what makes men poets rather than men of
science is precisely that they never limit themselves to the mere clear
statement of the concept, but always express its human significance
as well. A theory of human destiny is expressed in Prospero's lines--
We are such stuff
As dreams are made of, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep;
but with overtones of feeling at the core. Or consider the passion
with which Lucretius argues for a naturalistic conception of the
universe.
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