" There are only two views with which it (poetry) has nothing in common. One is the view of life which they hold whose motto is "Nil admirari." With this it can have no fellowship, for it cuts off the springs of emotion at their very sources. The other antipode is the philosophy which denies us any access to truth, except through the senses ; which refuses to believe anything which scalpel, or crucible, or microscope cannot verify ; which reduces human nature to a heap of finely granulated, iridescent dust, and empties man of a soul and the universe of a God. Such a philosophy would leave to poetry only one function,-to deck with tinsel the coffin of universal humanity. This is a function which she declines to perform.
But we need have no fears that it will come to this. Poetry will not succumb before materialism, or agnosticism, or any other cobweb of the sophisticated brain. It is an older, stronger birth than these, and will survive them. It will throw itself out into fresh forms ; it will dig for itself new channels ; under some form suited to each age, it will continue through all time, for it is an undying effluence of the soul of man. "
- from Aspects of Poetry being Lectures delivered at Oxford by John Campbell Shairp, LL. D. (1891)
The current trial in Dover, Pennsylvania of Intelligent Design is not merely an attack on a body of scientific thought. It is an attack on "universal humanity". Men who are afraid to even consider that man might have a soul, and that the universe might have a God, are desperate to ensure that no children ever ponder such thoughts. They are not only attacking scientific thought, they are destroying the poetry of our children's souls.
Anyone interested in blow by blow updates of the trial should check Jonathan and Amanda Witt's blog http://wittingshire.blogspot.com/. Jonathan works for the Discovery Institute and is the midst of the whole Intelligent Design debate.
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