64 The Rice Institute Pamphlet
poetry and prose must not be separated in the manner of
naturalistic logic, like two co-ordinated concepts simply op-
posed the one to the other: we must conceive them in devel-
opment as a passage from poetry to prose. And since the
poet, in this passage, not only presupposes a passionate ma-
terial, owing to the unity of the spirit, but preserves tire pas-
sionality and elevates it to the passionality of a poet (passion
for art), so the thinker or prosaist not only preserves that
passionality and elevates it to a passionality for science, but
also preserves the intuitive force, owing to which his judg-
ments come forth expressed together with the passionality
that surrounds them, and therefore they retain their artistic
as well as their scientific character. We can always contem-
plate this artistic character, assuming its scientific character,
or separatmg it therefrom and from the criticism of science,
in order to enjoy the æsthetie form which it has assumed;
and this is also the reason why science belongs, though in
different aspects, to the history of science and to the history
of literature, and why, among the many different kinds of
poetry enumerated by the rhetoricians, it would at the least
be capricious to refuse to number the “poetry of prose,”
which is sometimes far purer poetry than much pretentious
poetry of poetry. And it will be well that I should mention
again a new problem of the same sort, to which I have al-
ready alluded in passing: namely, tire connection between
art and morality, which has been denied to be immediate
identification of the one with the other, but which must now
be reasserted, and to note that, since the poet preserves the
passion for his art when free from every other passionality,
so he preserves in his art the consciousness of duty (duty
toward art), and every poet, in the act of creation, is moral,
because he accomplishes a sacred function.