into a higher form; and following with his eyes the life,
uses the forms which express that life, and so his speech
flows with the flowing of nature. All the facts of the
animal economy, sex, nutriment, gestation, birth, growth,
are symbols of the passage of the world into the soul of
man, to suffer there a change and reappear a new and
higher fact. He uses forms according to the life, and
not according to the form. This is true science. The
poet alone knows astronomy, chemistry, vegetation and
animation, for he does not stop at these facts, but
employs them as signs. He knows why the plain or meadow
of space was strewn with these flowers we call suns and
moons and stars; why the great deep is adorned with
animals, with men, and gods; for in every word he speaks
he rides on them as the horses of thought.

By virtue of this science the poet is the Namer
or Language-maker, naming things sometimes after
their appearance, sometimes after their essence,
and giving to every one its own name and not
another's, thereby rejoicing the intellect, which
delights in detachment or boundary. The poets made
all the words, and therefore language is the
archives of history, and, if we must say it, a
sort of tomb of the muses. For though the origin
of most of our words is forgotten, each word was
at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency
because for the moment it symbolized the world to
the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist
finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant