Ascent Of Man Research Articles

‘Life built herself a myriad forms’: epics of gestation and co-operation in late nineteenth-century women’s poetry

ABSTRACT This article argues for a specifically female appropriation and reshaping of the epic tradition in the wake of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. Based on an analysis of Mathilde Blind’s The Ascent of Man and Louisa Sarah Bevington’s ‘Unto this Present’, it will show how this ‘female evolutionary epic’ responds to and counteracts Social Darwinist narratives of competition and struggle by emphasizing forces of (maternal) gestation, co-operation and sympathy in the development of life on earth. In doing so, these poems anticipate Peter Kropotkin’s notion of ‘mutual aid’ as the primary factor in evolution.

Blatant Dehumanization is Not Influenced by Dual Identity Labels: Evidence from the Canadian Context

Blatant dehumanization has been shown to be prevalent in modern society. However, little work has explored the possible ways in which blatant dehumanization may be attenuated. The current study addresses this gap in the literature by exploring if activating a dual identity attenuates (or even erases) blatant dehumanization. To investigate these issues, Canadian participants completed the “Ascent of Man” scale, rating various groups in terms of their perceived evolutionary qualities. Half of our participants saw labels with the qualifier “-Canadians” attached, while the other half saw no such qualifier. Results showed that, regardless of whether the “-Canadians” label was provided, participants rated Filipinos, Christians, Arabs, Muslims, and Indigenous groups as significantly lower than Whites on the evolution scale. As such, provision of the additional group label “-Canadians” did not influence the manifestation of blatant dehumanization. We also found that ratings on the evolution scale significantly correlated with both Social Dominance Orientation and Empathic Concern levels, such that stronger adherence to current power structures and social hierarchies showed stronger blatant dehumanization, while those with a high pre-disposition for altruistic behaviours and emotions showed weaker blatant dehumanization. We discuss our results in the light of other research on blatant dehumanization and intergroup processes.
  

Rethinking History, Science, and Religion: An Exploration of Conflict and the Complexity Principle

Rethinking History, Science, and Religion: An Exploration of Conflict and the Complexity Principle

Universum of education in the context of the whole and part

Although at present there are quite a few studies on the philosophy of education, nevertheless, their authors pay insufficient attention to understanding the phenomenon of education as a universal phenomenon of social life. This article analyzes education not only as a socio-cultural phenomenon, but is considered more broadly as an integral (single-separate) system with many components. This allows us to formulate the main question of the philosophy of education, to present education as a universe, closely linking the state, society and person into a single whole. In this regard, the authors intend to show that the solution of the numerous problems facing society in crisis situations depends on the solution of the main issue of the philosophy of education. They proceed from the fact that the essence of education lies in the ascent of man to universal nature, as Hegel spoke about in his time, and the most important component of this process is the awakening of spirituality. The need to bring the real educational process into conformity with its idea (meaning) is revealed as the most important condition and criterion for the effectiveness of education. The idea of education carries the maximum generalized potential of studying the phenomenon of education and shows that education as a whole cannot be reduced or viewed through the prism of any one of its components.

“Trust” In Divine Promises as an Epistemological Verse in the Qur'an

The degrees of human perfection depend on the extent of his knowledge, and the extent of his knowledge depends on his existence capacity. Man's ascent to the highest levels of existence is the basic plan of Islam for human education, and the role of the religious lifestyle geometry in the realization of this plan is more effective than any other factor. Practice based on trust in divine promises is one of the sides of this geometry. The present study, in a descriptive-analytic way tries to examine the functions of trustworthy action based on trust in divine promises - as one of the important aspects of lifestyle in a meaningful relationship with the category of human cognition and desires - based on Qur’anic verses. The findings are as follow: 1) Achieving evidence is a valid argument for accepting religion and entering the realm of religiosity. 2) Observing the fulfillment of one of the divine promises is one of the examples of evidence. 3) The fulfillment of divine promises as a verse in the path of religious life occurs regularly, completes the religious faith and gradually brings the believer to the levels of certain knowledge. 4) Achieving religious Fiqh is one of the unique functions of trustworthy practice. 5) Continuation of action based on divine promises leads to the overcoming of the deep innate desire for patience in human beings, and the Tafaqquh of some religious truths flows from this context.

Sebastian Faulks's Genesis Obsession – and Related Issues

AbstractIn this article I discuss the surprising similarity between the interpretation of the story told in chapter 3 of Genesis put forward in several of his novels by Sebastian Faulks and my own interpretation set out in my book, The Fall and the Ascent of Man: How Genesis Supports Darwin. Faulks and I argue that Genesis 3 is about hominization, the achievement of human status by a proto-human couple by the acquisition of self-awareness. However, that is where the similarity ends. I consider Faulks's understanding of self-awareness to be seriously mistaken, reductive and incoherent, and I take issue with what I consider to be the consequences of this mistaken understanding.

Reconceiving Nature: Ecofeminism in Late Victorian Women's Poetry by Patricia Murphy

Reviewed by: Reconceiving Nature: Ecofeminism in Late Victorian Women's Poetry by Patricia Murphy Marion Shaw RECONCEIVING NATURE: ECOFEMINISM IN LATE VICTORIAN WOMEN'S POETRY, by Patricia Murphy. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2019. 262 pp. $50.00 cloth, $50.00 ebook. Patricia Murphy's objectives in Reconceiving Nature: Ecofeminism in Late Victorian Women's Poetry are threefold: to direct attention to poets who have been relatively neglected; to increase interest in ecological concerns in Victorian literature; and to stimulate interest in women's nature poetry, particularly from the later part of the nineteenth century (pp. 33-34). The author covers her ground in a highly referenced monograph with detailed analysis of selected poems. Murphy's general introduction, "Nascent Ecofeminism," some thirty pages long, rehearses the dominant ideas of the Victorian period toward nature, in particular the "implicit equation of nature and women" (p. 5). From Copernicus onward, the earth has been viewed as female, fecund, and nourishing, seeded by the male agent of the sun. Victorians like Carlyle and even Darwin continued this thinking, and it lead inexorably to domination, with the earth lacking agency, as did women. Murphy's argument is that her chosen poets—Augusta Webster, Mathilde Blind, Michael Field, Alice Meynell, Constance Naden, and L. S. Bevington—challenged this orthodoxy. Throughout her study, Murphy follows the pattern of providing an introduction to the poet, then a highly selective choice of poems as evidence. She begins in Chapter One, "Augusta Webster: Interrogating the Nature Woman Link," with Webster, whose campaign for higher education for girls and women was underpinned by a denial of essentialism. Webster held that nature was a construct as much as womanhood, and there was no inextricable link between them. A close, vigorous if somewhat overwritten reading of Webster's compelling poem "The Swallows" (1881) illustrates Webster's challenge to the fusion of nature and women. The following chapter, "Matilde Blind: Contesting Domination," gives an analysis of Blind's The Ascent of Man (1889), a long narrative poem charting the failure of Western civilization under male domination, which affirms the need for a rebirth (surely a touch of essentialism here?) to redeem the natural world. An admirer of Percy Shelley, Blind is perhaps the most extreme and revolutionary thinker of this group of women poets. Chapter Three, "Michael Field: Eroticizing Agency," focuses on the two women, Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper, who wrote together under the male pseudonym, Michael Field. Their contribution to the debate is to eroticize nature, seeing it not merely as narrowly sexual but as sensual, passionate, spontaneous, and delightful. Finding models in the writings of Homer, Virgil, and Ovid, Michael Field in "The Sleeping Venus" (1892) sees the female body and the contours of the earth joined by "no impermeable boundary": [End Page 167] There is sympathy between Her and Earth of largest reach, For the sex that forms them each Is a bond, a holiness, That unconsciously must bless And unite them, as they lie. (p. 101) The poem celebrates autoeroticism and also, it seems to me, lesbian eroticism. In its insistence on mutual female presence and desire, it too is surely essentialist. In Chapter Four, "Alice Meynell: Unsettling the Nature/Culture Dichotomy," Murphy argues that Meynell refuses to assign gender to the link between nature and humanity. An admirer of Tennyson, Meynell designates him "our wild poet . . . Wild flowers are his—great poet—wild winds, wild lights, wild heart, wild eyes!" (p. 143). Meynell belongs to a tradition of writers like Richard Jefferies and Gilbert White, who had an artist's "sympathy [for and] an eye for landscape" (p. 142). Murphy notes that in Meynell's poems, for example her powerful "The Visiting Sea," (1913) there is no gender assignment to the speaker who tells of an invasion that is not a male-female rape but a visitation from the seaward spaces, None knows, not even you, the places Brimmed at your coming, out of sight, —The little solitudes of delightThis tide constrains in dim embraces. (pp. 133-34) In Meynell's poems nature is not passive but is an active and equal partner with humans, different from William Wordsworth's works, in which nature is used...

The Ascent of Man and the Politics of Humanity's Evolutionary Future

Throughout the twentieth century, contemporary understandings of evolutionary theory were tightly linked to visions of the future freighted with moral consequence. This essay traces the origins and legacy of this scientific commitment to a universal family of man in postwar evolutionary theory, and elaborates how evolutionary scientists sought to reframe the politics of human evolution by claiming that the principles governing the physical past of humanity differed fundamentally from those that would matter in the coming decades, centuries, or even millennia. Education and public engagement embodied the moral importance of actively participating in the creation of that better, future world.

The ascent of man: Theoretical and empirical evidence for blatant dehumanization.

Dehumanization is a central concept in the study of intergroup relations. Yet although theoretical and methodological advances in subtle, "everyday" dehumanization have progressed rapidly, blatant dehumanization remains understudied. The present research attempts to refocus theoretical and empirical attention on blatant dehumanization, examining when and why it provides explanatory power beyond subtle dehumanization. To accomplish this, we introduce and validate a blatant measure of dehumanization based on the popular depiction of evolutionary progress in the "Ascent of Man." We compare blatant dehumanization to established conceptualizations of subtle and implicit dehumanization, including infrahumanization, perceptions of human nature and human uniqueness, and implicit associations between ingroup-outgroup and human-animal concepts. Across 7 studies conducted in 3 countries, we demonstrate that blatant dehumanization is (a) more strongly associated with individual differences in support for hierarchy than subtle or implicit dehumanization, (b) uniquely predictive of numerous consequential attitudes and behaviors toward multiple outgroup targets, (c) predictive above prejudice, and (d) reliable over time. Finally, we show that blatant-but not subtle-dehumanization spikes immediately after incidents of real intergroup violence and strongly predicts support for aggressive actions like torture and retaliatory violence (after the Boston Marathon bombings and Woolwich attacks in England). This research extends theory on the role of dehumanization in intergroup relations and intergroup conflict and provides an intuitive, validated empirical tool to reliably measure blatant dehumanization.

Supplemental Material for The Ascent of Man: Theoretical and Empirical Evidence for Blatant Dehumanization

Supplemental Material for The Ascent of Man: Theoretical and Empirical Evidence for Blatant Dehumanization

New Utopias for Old?

Will technology provide a perfect future for the ascent of man? Or is it wishful thinking by techno-pundits who want to believe human progress is all toward a utopian state of existence?

‘Carrying Her Coyness to a Dangerous Pitch’: Mathilde Blind and Darwinian Sexual Selection

: The poet and novelist Mathilde Blind (1841–96) is known to have been influenced by evolutionary theory, particularly in her epic poem The Ascent of Man (1889). However, critics have not yet noted the extent to which her depictions of the courtship plot in her less overtly evolutionary writings are indebted to Darwin's representations of animal mating rituals. Although Darwin's commentary on patterns of relationships in the animal world often reinforced stereotypes of masculine aggression and feminine coyness, feminist writers, including Blind, shifted the focus onto creatures, such as birds and spiders, whose mating behaviour disrupts these stereotypes. This article examines four pieces in which Blind re-imagines the courtship plot by applying imagery of other species to human relationships: her poems ‘The Song of the Willi’ (1871), The Heather on Fire (1886) and ‘The Teamster’ (1889), and her novel Tarantella (1885). By rewriting the courtship plot in this way, Blind contests the idea that middle-class gender relations are sanctioned by the natural world and highlights the variety of possible gender roles found in other species.

Historical aspects of Pott’s disease (spinal tuberculosis) management

Spinal tuberculosis has existed in human beings since the ascent of man on earth. Historically, the management has progressed from regional orthodox therapies to the current, more effective, drugs. Historical perspectives regarding the management have been collated by going through the important publications during the past 6 decades. For convenience, the manuscript has been organized as "orthodox traditional" treatment, early "chemotherapy period", "post chemotherapy treatment", "middle-path" philosophy, and the current treatment with availability of modern imaging facilities. Broad conclusions based upon the published data and personal observations (1959-2011) are summarized as follows: If diagnosis is made at predestructive stage and the patient is treated by standard drugs, the infection would heal in about 95% patients without significant deformities and complications. Neural complications are still encountered in general hospital outpatients. Diagnosis and treatment at early stages would resolve the neurology without operation in about 40% of cases. Nearly 60% of patients would require to be operatively decompressed without jeopardizing mechanical stability. However, despite current treatment approximately 8% of tuberculous paraplegics do not recover functionally. Immunocompromised state and multidrug resistance to standard drugs (8 to 10%) are the current (and future) challenges to the doctors and the society.

The ascent of man: a philosophy of human nature

The ascent of man: a philosophy of human nature

Bioenergetics, the origins of complexity, and the ascent of man

Complex structures are generated and maintained through energy flux. Structures embody information, and biological information is stored in nucleic acids. The progressive increase in biological complexity over geologic time is thus the consequence of the information-generating power of energy flow plus the information-accumulating capacity of DNA, winnowed by natural selection. Consequently, the most important component of the biological environment is energy flow: the availability of calories and their use for growth, survival, and reproduction. Animals can exploit and adapt to available energy resources at three levels. They can evolve different anatomical forms through nuclear DNA (nDNA) mutations permitting exploitation of alternative energy reservoirs, resulting in new species. They can evolve modified bioenergetic physiologies within a species, primarily through the high mutation rate of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA)-encoded bioenergetic genes, permitting adjustment to regional energetic environments. They can alter the epigenomic regulation of the thousands of dispersed bioenergetic genes via mitochondrially generated high-energy intermediates permitting individual accommodation to short-term environmental energetic fluctuations. Because medicine pertains to a single species, Homo sapiens, functional human variation often involves sequence changes in bioenergetic genes, most commonly mtDNA mutations, plus changes in the expression of bioenergetic genes mediated by the epigenome. Consequently, common nDNA polymorphisms in anatomical genes may represent only a fraction of the genetic variation associated with the common "complex" diseases, and the ascent of man has been the product of 3.5 billion years of information generation by energy flow, accumulated and preserved in DNA and edited by natural selection.

The Next Evolutionary Step in the Ascent of Man in the Cosmos

Physician-scientist Jonas Salk comments on the concerns about humanity's future and the values he shared with Jacob Bronowski. The author outlines his own view of evolution and acknowledges Bronowski's contributions to our further understanding of this process in which humans are participants as well as products. Like Bronowski, the author believes the human race has the power to influence its future, whether by creating disaster or by saving itself through conscious choice. He envisions as the next evolutionary step the creative interaction and convergence of the various cultures, including the ‘two cultures’ of science and humanism examined by Bronowski. The author suggest that our ‘evolutionary instinct’ will guide us in this direction, and he challenges us to prepare for a future without catastrophe.

Categorical Ontology of Complex Spacetime Structures: The Emergence of Life and Human Consciousness

A categorical ontology of space and time is presented for emergent biosystems, super-complex dynamics, evolution and human consciousness. Relational structures of organisms and the human mind are naturally represented in non-abelian categories and higher dimensional algebra. The ascent of man and other organisms through adaptation, evolution and social co-evolution is viewed in categorical terms as variable biogroupoid representations of evolving species. The unifying theme of local-to-global approaches to organismic development, evolution and human consciousness leads to novel patterns of relations that emerge in super- and ultra- complex systems in terms of colimits of biogroupoids, and more generally, as compositions of local procedures to be defined in terms of locally Lie groupoids. Solutions to such local-to-global problems in highly complex systems with ‘broken symmetry’ may be found with the help of generalized van Kampen theorems in algebraic topology such as the Higher Homotopy van Kampen theorem (HHvKT). Primordial organism structures are predicted from the simplest metabolic-repair systems extended to self-replication through autocatalytic reactions. The intrinsic dynamic ‘asymmetry’ of genetic networks in organismic development and evolution is investigated in terms of categories of many-valued, Łukasiewicz–Moisil logic algebras and then compared with those obtained for (non-commutative) quantum logics. The claim is defended in this essay that human consciousness is unique and should be viewed as an ultra-complex, global process of processes. The emergence of consciousness and its existence seem dependent upon an extremely complex structural and functional unit with an asymmetric network topology and connectivities—the human brain—that developed through societal co-evolution, elaborate language/symbolic communication and ‘virtual’, higher dimensional, non-commutative processes involving separate space and time perceptions. Philosophical theories of the mind are approached from the theory of levels and ultra-complexity viewpoints which throw new light on previous representational hypotheses and proposed semantic models in cognitive science. Anticipatory systems and complex causality at the top levels of reality are also discussed in the context of the ontological theory of levels with its complex/entangled/intertwined ramifications in psychology, sociology and ecology. The presence of strange attractors in modern society dynamics gives rise to very serious concerns for the future of mankind and the continued persistence of a multi-stable biosphere. A paradigm shift towards non-commutative, or non-Abelian, theories of highly complex dynamics is suggested to unfold now in physics, mathematics, life and cognitive sciences, thus leading to the realizations of higher dimensional algebras in neurosciences and psychology, as well as in human genomics, bioinformatics and interactomics.

A Conceptual Construction of Complexity Levels Theory in Spacetime Categorical Ontology: Non-Abelian Algebraic Topology, Many-Valued Logics and Dynamic Systems

A novel conceptual framework is introduced for the Complexity Levels Theory in a Categorical Ontology of Space and Time. This conceptual and formal construction is intended for ontological studies of Emergent Biosystems, Super-complex Dynamics, Evolution and Human Consciousness. A claim is defended concerning the universal representation of an item’s essence in categorical terms. As an essential example, relational structures of living organisms are well represented by applying the important categorical concept of natural transformations to biomolecular reactions and relational structures that emerge from the latter in living systems. Thus, several relational theories of living systems can be represented by natural transformations of organismic, relational structures. The ascent of man and other living organisms through adaptation, is viewed in novel categorical terms, such as variable biogroupoid representations of evolving species. Such precise but flexible evolutionary concepts will allow the further development of the unifying theme of local-to-global approaches to highly complex systems in order to represent novel patterns of relations that emerge in super- and ultra-complex systems in terms of compositions of local procedures. Solutions to such local-to-global problems in highly complex systems with ‘broken symmetry’ might be possible to be reached with the help of higher homotopy theorems in algebraic topology such as the generalized van Kampen theorems (HHvKT). Categories of many-valued, Łukasiewicz-Moisil (LM) logic algebras provide useful concepts for representing the intrinsic dynamic ‘asymmetry’ of genetic networks in organismic development and evolution, as well as to derive novel results for (non-commutative) Quantum Logics. Furthermore, as recently pointed out by Baianu and Poli (Theory and applications of ontology, vol 1. Springer, Berlin, in press), LM-logic algebras may also provide the appropriate framework for future developments of the ontological theory of levels with its complex/entangled/intertwined ramifications in psychology, sociology and ecology. As shown in the preceding two papers in this issue, a paradigm shift towards non-commutative, or non-Abelian, theories of highly complex dynamics—which is presently unfolding in physics, mathematics, life and cognitive sciences—may be implemented through realizations of higher dimensional algebras in neurosciences and psychology, as well as in human genomics, bioinformatics and interactomics.

Ibsen and the dramaturgy of uncertainty

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. Pinter, Harold, “Program Note for The Dumb Waiter.” Quoted in John Russell Taylor, Anger and After (Harmondsworth: Pelican Books, 1963), 300. 2. Ibsen, Henrik, “Ghosts”, The Oxford Ibsen, translated and edited by J.W.McFarlane (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), Vol. V, 476. Subsequent references to Ghosts and ancillary materials are provided in parentheses. 3. Frayn, Michael, Copenhagen (London: Methuen, 1998), 74. All subsequent references to Copenhagen and ancillary materials are provided in parentheses. 4. W.B. Yeats, “Lapis Lazuli”, The Collected Poem of W.B. Yeats (London: Macmillan, 1958), 338. 5. Ibsen, Henrik, “Gengangere” [Ghosts]. Samlede Værker, VI (Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel, 1914), 127 6. Their productions of A Doll's House have been extensively reviewed by Marvin Carlson, “‘Unser Ibsen‚: Ibsen on the contemporary German stage,” Ibsen Studies IV, 1, (2004), 55–69; Joan Templeton, “Updating A Doll House: Bergman, Ostermeier, Kimmig and Breuer,” in Ibsen on the Cusp of the 21st Century, ed. Pål Bj⊘rby, Alvhild Dversgal, and Idar Stegane (Larvik: Alvheim & Eide, 2005), 183–192; and Sven Heed, “Violence and Revolt in a Barbie Doll's House,” North‐West Passage, n.2, (2005), 117–125. 7. Steiner, George, Antigones, The Jackson Knight Memorial Lecture (Wilton, Somerset: Cox, Sons and Co., 1979), 16. Subsequent references to this lecture appear in parentheses. 8. Steiner, George, Lessons of the Masters (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2003), 28. 9. Beckett, Samuel, Waiting for Godot (New York: Grove Press, 1954), 10–12. 10. Ibsen, Henrik, “Vildanden” [The Wild Duck]. Samlede Værker, VI. (Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel, 1914), 167. Subsequent references appear in parentheses. 11. Esslin, Martin, “Ibsen and Modern Drama.” Ibsen and The Theatre. ed. Errol Durbach (London: Macmillan, 1980), 75. 12. Bronowski, Jacob, The Ascent of Man (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1973), 367. Subsequent references appear in parentheses. 13. Michael Frayn offers, in his “Postscript” to Copenhagen, a number of German variants on the idea: Unsicherheit (unssureness), Ungenauigkeit (inexactness), Unbestimmtheit (indeterminacy/indeterminability). See pp. 101–102. 14. Shaw, Bernard, “The Quintessence of Ibsenism 1891, 1912–13,” in Shaw and Ibsen, ed. J.L. Wisenthal (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979), 133. 15. Ibsen Henrik, “Brand,” The Oxford Ibsen, edited by J.W.McFarlane, translated by Christopher Fry (London: Oxford University Press, 1972), Vol. III, 250. 16. Atle Kittang's article, “Ibsen, Heroism and the Uncanny,” is in press and will soon appear in the Special Ibsen issue of Modern Drama, 49.3 (2006). In this same issue, Thomas Van Laan in his article, “The Tragic Vision of Ibsen's Rosmersholm,” also emphasizes the uncertain elements in this play: “The most important component of the tragic view of Rosmersholm,” he writes, “ is the equivocality that makes acting dubious and perilous. Assuming that recognition is a very likely, if not necessary, characteristic of tragedy — as I do — I would argue that the play's recognition is constituted by passages like Rebekka's account of something ‘coming over’ her irresistibly, her ‘that's how something like that goes,’ and Rosmer's ‘That we will never puzzle out to the bottom.” 17. Ewbank, Inga‐Stina, “Reading Ibsen's Signs: Ambivalence on Page and Stage, ” Ibsen Studies IV.1 (2004), 7, 15 fn. 4.

RAPTUROUS FORMS: MATHILDE BLIND'S DARWINIAN POETICS

Inspired whilst on holiday in 1893, the poet and literary critic Mathilde Blind speculated on the potential for intimacy in great poetry: “The poet only truly lives when he feels the rapture of communion; when his soul mirrored in a sister soul is doubled like the moon glassed in the Lake of Nemi” (Commonplace book36; hereafterCB). Blind here alludes to the belief that from the shores of Lake Nemi, located just southeast of Rome, one might witness a perfect reflection of the moon upon the lake's still waters. Like the moon that casts its light down on the lake, Blind imagines the poet radiating outward toward her readers and experiencing with them “the rapture of communion,” a flash of sympathetic confederacy. It was an ideal Blind had considered from her first volume of poetry in 1867 to her recently publishedDramas in Miniature(1891), and it had determined most notablyThe Ascent of Man, Blind's 1889 poetic re-writing of Darwinian evolution. In her work as a literary critic as well as in her poetry, Blind singles out moments of passionate communication, such as lines of D. G. Rossetti that “set[] ones nerve tingling” (Correspondence; letter to Richard Garnett, 10 October 1881), and Shelley's poetry, which is like an “electric telegraph of thought flashing its fiery spark through the dull dense world of sense” (“Shelley” 97). At its best, poetry fuses an “intensity of feeling, [a] depth of thought, music, and form” (Correspondence; letter to Richard Garnett, 26 January 1870) so as to resonate most effectively with what Tennyson called “the deep heart of every living thing” (Poems1: 85).