Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 87, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 April 1911 — Conscience vs. Art. [ARTICLE]

Conscience vs. Art.

Thomas Nelson Page in the smoking room of the Baltic contrasted the literary and the scientific temperaments. “But a letter will best bring out my point,” said the famous author. “You’ve heard, of course, of Tennyson’s poem, ‘The Vision of Sin.’ Wtell, an eminent mathematician wrote to Tennyson, oh the appearance of his poem, a letter that ran like this: “ ‘Dear Sir —I find in a recent poem of yours entitled “The Vision of Sin,” the following unwarranted statement: “Every moment dies a man, and every moment one is born.” I need hardly point out that this calculation, if correct, would tend to keep the sum total of the world’s population in estate of perpetual equipoise, whereas, it is an established fact that the said population is constantly on the increase. I would therefore suggest that ih the next edition of this poem the erroneous calculation to which I refer should ,be corrected as follows: “Every moment dies a man, and one and a sixteenth 1b born.” I may add that the exact figures are 1.167, but something must, of course, be con-, ceded to the laws of rhythm.’ ’’