Part 9

It is not an unfair judgment, we think, that decides, on a survey of contemporary intellectual activities, to grant science the first place. Whether we consider the quality of the work which is being done, its importance to mankind, or the spirit in which the work is done, we think science earns that place. Our age is a scientific age to an extent which is certainly not generally realised. Contemporary scientific work is of a quality fully comparable with that of the greatest periods of its history; it is inevitable that our age should emerge, in the history of the future, as an age of science. It has, indeed, already established a perspective which leads to a revaluation of the Victorian age. There have already been many writers who have thought that age more memorable for its science than for its other achievements, that its significance to humanity lay more in the work of Darwin, Faraday, and Maxwell than in that of Tennyson and Matthew Arnold, or even in that of Mr. Gladstone, but the perspective we have now obtained puts the matter almost beyond doubt. With most of us our outlook is the result of a decrepit tradition. Our orientation towards life, so far as we are conscious of having one, is based upon the values we attribute to the various objects of our thoughts, and these values are determined partly by our instinctive desires and partly by the suggestions of our education--using the term “education” to include all converse with the minds of our fellows. Education, so defined, is the result very largely of a long and widespread tradition, a general tradition of European culture. It is a curious fact that, although the history of science goes as far back as the history of the arts, science is not an integral part of this, nevertheless, very catholic culture. There are periods, it is true, when some scientific theory is sufficiently dramatic, or appears sufficiently pertinent to man’s destiny, to secure general attention; Newton’s theory of gravitation, Darwin’s theory of evolution, and Einstein’s theory of relativity have each given rise to such a period. Einstein’s theory, we are informed, is now the favourite topic of enlightened conversation in Parisian salons, as Newton’s theory once was. Some of this interest, no doubt, is the product of disinterested curiosity, and in that respect is vastly different from the once general interest in Darwin’s theory. But we fear that many of those who are curious about Einstein’s theory would, if they understood it, find it uninteresting. We dare not interpret this curiosity as a sign that people are beginning to be as naturally interested in science as they are in literature, for instance.

Nevertheless, we believe that the old culture is moribund in the sense that its particular scale of values is undergoing revision. Science is becoming less an affair for specialists; it is acquiring a “human” value. An increasing number of people are beginning to realise that a great science, such as Physics, may offer objects for contemplation which are as delicate, as subtle, as exquisitely harmonious as the dreams of Plato--and much better founded. And in relation to man, his present state and possible future, science alone, to those who are not satisfied with less than verifiable knowledge, speaks with the accent of authority. The great constructions of science are grandiose without being chimerical; they are beautiful but not deceiving. Indeed, one sometimes has the feeling that it is only in science, nowadays, that one still meets with the spirit of adventure, the sense of boundless and glorious possibilities, with an exultant hope. Our poets and men of letters generally are extraordinarily tame and disillusioned creatures compared with our romantic and daring men of science. It is refreshing to turn from the lamentations of our literary men to such a book as the _Space, Time, Matter_ of Hermann Weyl, if only for the fervour, the immense enthusiasm with which that highly accomplished mathematician writes. Einstein is his Columbus, with the difference that his America has indicated the existence of yet vaster continents. And this enthusiasm is justified by its fruits; it has inspired Herr Weyl to make what is unquestionably the greatest advance on Einstein’s own work which has yet been made. It is not in Physics alone that we find this note. To the biologists, also, the world has become young again. Should our ignorant and unimaginative politicians, and our still more ignorant and unimaginative business men, succeed in turning the whole heroic effort and age-long struggle which has produced our present culture to a mockery, they will put an end to a curiously interesting and promising transition age, to an age which is at once _fin de siècle_ and at the morning of a glorious renaissance. But if they do not succeed, if the ordinary man shows himself even a little worthy of the immense travail of his species, then we prophesy that science will become an integral part of the culture of the future. The new physics, the new biology, the new psychology, will be too obviously pertinent to all man’s chief preoccupations for us to be able to pretend that the present narrowly conceived _humaniora_ furnish a liberal education. We even believe that if the old arts are to become youthful again, it must be by a transfusion of blood. It will not be sufficient that the philosophy and literature of the future should “accommodate” themselves to the scientific outlook; they must be inspired by it.

Meanwhile, scientific men must be charitable; they must believe the best. If science is to become an integral part of culture, scientific men must help to make this possible. We believe that much of the present interest in science is genuine; that it springs from a serious attempt on the part of many people to find out what science can tell them about themselves and the Universe they live in. Science is not hunted purely for its dividend-earning capacities or for its power of providing new thrills. Einstein, we understand, is suspicious of the popular interest his theory has evoked; “a mere fashion,” he says. And doubtless his suspicion is largely justified. But we believe there is more in it than that--that there are many who, besides valuing the delightful dreams of the poets and philosophers, have an affection for _knowledge_. And when they find that the constructions of science are not one whit less delightful than the dreams of the poets, this affection may give rise to a permanent attachment. And with these new objects of interest will come a change in values. Men will learn to differentiate in their beliefs between those which are mere indulgences of emotion and those which correspond to objective truth. This is the path by which the mind becomes mature. It may not be, in all stages, a pleasant process, but it leads to increased freedom and increased power. The impossible will no longer be attempted, but the region of the possible will be seen to be vastly greater. Man will see in what directions he can shape his destiny, and he will be able to enter on the task with a rational hope. All his courage and endurance will have a chance of victorious achievement; he will know that he is not engaged in a forlorn hope; the world will become young again.

THE RETURN OF MYSTERY

“It is a universal condition of the enjoyable that the mind must believe in the existence of a law and yet have a mystery to move about in.”--JAMES CLERK MAXWELL.

That our thinking, and with it our feeling, is largely conditioned by assumptions which have no logical necessity, is a commonplace of philosophy, and is indeed apparent to the slightest introspection. Characteristic of any age is a body of beliefs, resting on more or less good evidence, and a group of feelings associated with those beliefs. The German language, so rich in indefinite but valuable general terms, afforded the word _Zeitgeist_ for this complex, a word we have directly translated into the Spirit of the Age. The name is a good one; it indicates that we are dealing with something which is widely diffused and also subject to change. It is subject to change, but it plays a dominating rôle in the age to which it belongs. The Spirit of the Age is something that practically all the intellectual life of the age has in common. It is not manifested only in philosophical treatises or in works of art; it is often manifested even more strikingly in statesmen’s speeches and a country’s domestic and foreign policy. It is a kind of intellectual and emotional atmosphere of which everybody is aware, but which probably nobody could define. We see, however, that a very important part of it consists of a sense of probability, of a tendency to accept certain kinds of explanation and to reject others.

For the last few decades, at any rate, Science has been the chief factor in forming this omnipresent sense of probability. As a matter of fact, it is probable that the influence of Science in forming the Spirit of the Age can be traced a very long way back, as far back as Copernicus. Not that we assert the existence of a close connection between the Science and the other intellectual activities of Copernicus’s own age. The influence of which we speak is likely to manifest itself gradually; in particular, it may take a long time to affect the arts. And by the time it has percolated so far its origin may be forgotten; it may appear as a subconscious rather than as a conscious group of assumptions. By the time a scientific discovery becomes part of the mental furniture of an age, many of what were originally its possible implications will have become an integral part of it. The original discovery will then be merely the nucleus of a rich intellectual and, possibly, emotional complex, of which the parts are no longer envisaged separately. The work of Newton, for example, and the great body of exact investigations he made possible, influenced the outlook of the nineteenth century chiefly in the direction of making determinism plausible. Such lecturers as Tyndall could confidently appeal to this mental predisposition on the part of their audience, although they had no need to postulate any direct acquaintance with the work of Newton and of his successors. The fact that Newton successfully formulated exact laws for the description of natural phenomena is the important aspect of his work from our present point of view. The influence of Copernicus was rather different. From the point of view of the history of Science his importance is that he made Newton possible; from our present point of view his importance is that he made Darwin possible. Copernicus’ destruction of the isolated position of man’s planet in the solar system prepares the mind for Darwin’s destruction of the isolated position of man in the animal kingdom. They each shocked the same set of prepossessions.

The “materialistic philosophy” which was so marked a feature of the latter part of the nineteenth century, and which still forms, we believe, the prevalent intellectual complexion, owed the whole of its plausibility to its supposed scientific backing. Its basis was not merely biological; physics played quite as great a part as biology. The notion of determinism derived its strength, as we have said, chiefly from physics; biology was not in a position to demonstrate the exact correspondences required. The ultimate grandiose vision of the purely natural and inevitable march of evolution from the atoms of the primitive nebula to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, as outlined by Tyndall in his Belfast Address, assumed the results of physics and astronomy as much as Darwin’s _Origin of Species_. It was because biology was not the only science involved that it was possible to found a “materialistic” philosophy on Darwinism. One primary assumption of that philosophy, that life arises from “dead” matter, not only had no biological support, but had been decisively refuted by the experiments of Pasteur. But, as related to the general movement of Science, the hypothesis had the necessary plausibility. Considering the then existing evidence, this hypothesis, together with the hypothesis that mental states are produced by atomic movements in a strictly determinist manner, are, indeed, striking instances of the way in which the _Zeitgeist_, as much as the evidence, determines the direction of our thinking.

The importance of such conceptions cannot be over-estimated. Directly or indirectly they influence the whole life, if not of their time, then of an age which succeeds them. The philosophy in question had existed for centuries, of course; what made it influential was the scientific backing it received, for, in these matters, Science has for some time past played the dominant rôle. Neither religion nor philosophy has been able successfully to oppose it; nowadays, indeed, they seem concerned only to agree with it. And if, here and there, a few artists have felt themselves outraged by what were supposed to be the teachings of Science, their influence has not been sufficient to deflect the stream. Such isolated protestants have had nothing but their feelings to oppose to what were considered to be facts, and the world, with what may have been a stupid honesty, has followed after the supposed facts. But the influence of Science on the arts would require a separate investigation. A certain stability is given to some serious art by its own tradition, and this may lessen its sensitiveness regarded merely as an indication of the spirit of its age. It is, nevertheless, very sensitive. In a history of modern literature, for example, it is impossible to exclude direct references to Darwin; it is usual, indeed, to devote some space to such “influences.” And the artist who is not at home in his age may be reduced to impotence by it. Dostoevsky is a magnificent example of a writer who, extremely sensitive to the spirit of his age, and profoundly understanding it, strove to transcend it. A smaller Dostoevsky might well have been nothing. And is a post-Darwinian Beethoven, or a post-Darwinian Dante, really conceivable?

Now it is unfortunate that, so far as scientific discoveries form the Spirit of the Age, they do so at second-hand. The _Origin of Species_ happens to be easy to read, but even so that body of thought known as “Darwinism” owes its influence chiefly to such expositors as Huxley and Tyndall. The thing becomes set; it assumes hard, bold outlines; the issue has to be presented with something of the simplicity of an election cry. The universe of Science becomes finally a universe from which all mystery is banished and where the only ultimates are small, incompressible spheres whose movements and combinations produce--everything. The chasm separating this conclusion from the actual scientific evidence is not realised. Very tentative and almost fantastic hypotheses become dogmas, and it is as dogmas that they become influences. As a matter of fact the scientific evidence, even of Darwin’s day, suggested quite other possibilities than those popularised as a “materialistic” philosophy. James Clerk Maxwell, who had a profounder insight into physical reality than any other man of his time, in a very little known essay, draws attention to the “singularities” characteristic of certain natural phenomena, and suggests that there are more singular points the higher the rank of the existence. “At these points, influences whose physical magnitude is too small to be taken account of by a finite being, may produce results of the greatest importance,” and he warns his readers against “that prejudice in favour of determinism which seems to arise from assuming that the physical science of the future is a mere magnified image of that of the past.”

Maxwell’s remark is now seen to have been prophetic. The extraordinarily profound and far-reaching philosophical implications of the theory of relativity have hardly yet begun to be investigated, but we have already a general sense of their direction. Hermann Weyl’s _Raum, Zeit, Materie_, for instance, the most thorough mathematical exposition of the whole theory which has yet appeared, hints not obscurely at the philosophical bearing of the new investigations. Now that, by Weyl’s own work, Maxwell’s electromagnetic equations are included by the theory, it seems to be scientifically complete. It presents us with a picture of the universe which is wholly unlike the picture of the early physics. In particular, an altogether different rôle is assigned to the human mind. So far as the exterior universe and the laws of nature are concerned, we see that the primary entity is the mind itself. It is the mind which has created, not only space and time, but the matter it has put within that framework. The mind has not created the universe out of nothing, it is true. But it is almost impossible to say anything intelligible in the old sense about the fundamental entities to which Einstein’s theory leads us. Professor Eddington suggests that they may be “the very stuff of our consciousness,” a somewhat mystical remark which nevertheless shows the trend of the new speculations. And, as a striking confirmation of Maxwell’s view of the possible development of physical science, we may quote one of the last sentences of Weyl’s profound discussion: “It must be emphatically stated that the present state of physics lends no support whatever to the belief that there is a causality of physical nature which is founded on rigorously exact laws.” Unfortunately not all men are mathematicians. The great and wonderful vista now opened up by Science--greater and more significant, we believe, than has existed at any previous time in the history of thought--is at present a consequence of highly abstruse investigations. The sheer technical difficulty of these inquiries will long hinder them from exerting their due influence on philosophy and, through philosophy, on the whole of the intellectual life of the age. But the new conceptions exist, and they derive their unshakable strength from the fact that they are the result of the severest Science. And surely no one can fail to see that they promise not only fascinating regions for thought, but a new liberation of the human spirit. Mystery, but more wonderful and full of promise than ever, has been restored to the universe.

MATHEMATICS AND MUSIC

It is possible that the old heading “Arts and Sciences” has been responsible for some of the barrenness which is so conspicuous a feature of æsthetic theory. For the heading seems usually to have suggested, not only that there is a difference between the arts and the sciences, but that the difference is of a fundamental kind. For the purposes of æsthetic theory the various arts are assumed to have more in common than any one of them has with any of the sciences. We find the writer on æsthetics expounding his principles in chapters headed Painting, Sculpture, Poetry, Music; but it is rare indeed to find the argument extended to mathematics and physics. Yet there is no evidence that such omissions are due to deliberate reflection; the philosopher has not decided, after examination, that the sciences are unæsthetic objects; we must assume that accidents of taste and education have prevented him from paying attention to what may conceivably be useful data for the formulation of a theory of æsthetic. Within the last two or three generations scientific men have been thinking and writing a good deal about the philosophic basis and implications of their study, and it is significant that this inquiry has led many of them to insist on the æsthetic character of the satisfactions that science affords. The late Henri Poincaré, in particular, has shown that scientific theories are akin to works of art, and in this country, Dr. Norman Campbell has asserted his belief that great men of science are essentially great artists. The point of view is an interesting one, and suggests that fresh light may be thrown upon æsthetic problems by a new grouping of their subject-matter. Instead of putting the arts and the sciences on opposite sides of the fence, it may be helpful to see whether certain members of these two groups have not a natural affinity with one another, and so gain hints for a different and more comprehensive classification.

It is noteworthy, in this respect, that music has always occupied an exceptional position among the arts. Pater tried to relate it to other arts by saying it was the art to which all others aspire:

The arts may be represented as continually struggling after the law or principle of music, to a condition which music alone completely realises; and one of the chief functions of æsthetic criticism, dealing with the products of art, new or old, is to estimate the degree in which each of these products approaches, in this sense, to musical law.

It is characteristic of Pater’s criticism, and of much of the criticism of his school, that it exists, as it were, within a world of its own. The meanings to be attached to his most important terms are always suggested or insinuated; they are never defined. The method is useful, perhaps even necessary, in dealing with a complex and elusive object, and where appeal is made to perceptions which lie on the fringe of consciousness. But it runs the grave danger of becoming altogether too tenuous to be intelligible when we make direct reference to the object it is supposed to illuminate. When, for instance, Pater says of the best music, “the end is not distinct from the means, the form from the matter, the subject from the expression,” we become acutely aware of the absence of definition in each of these primary terms directly we think of any actual composition. We feel, indeed, that the terminology is not natural; in contemplating a poem the mind may be naturally impelled to distinguish between subject and expression as a kind of first effort in analysis; it is doubtful whether, in listening to music, this direction for analysis ever presents itself. So that to say that in music subject and expression are identical is not to say anything useful about music, but merely to declare that that kind of analysis is irrelevant. It is very probable that nothing is to be gained by first making distinctions which have a meaning for other arts and then bringing music into the scheme by saying that for music such distinctions become meaningless.

But if we are to maintain that this kind of criticism is irrelevant, then music becomes not only an isolated art but the art of which we know least. If it cannot be accommodated as an example within the general body of æsthetic criticism, the criticism that uses such terms as Pater uses, then whatever general conclusions the multifarious writings of the last two centuries on the “beautiful” may be considered to have reached are not applicable to music. In this extremity it is natural, nowadays, to become “scientific.” Comparative studies are undertaken: the music of Java is compared with the music of Bach: the evolution of musical devices is made clear; the psychological condition of the patient under music is examined: the time taken for the right degree of hypnosis to be induced is determined. That such methods may one day stumble upon important facts it would be rash to deny, but nothing has yet been reached which illuminates the particular problem that music presents. We are frankly of the opinion that, so far, the difficult utterances of certain mystical or semi-mystical writers throw more light on the real nature of music than do those of common sense.