No More Learning

" But
we find also another statement among the extant fragments: "We step
and do not step into the same rivers; we are and are not. "

The comparison of this statement, which is mystical, with the one
quoted by Plato, which is scientific, shows how intimately the two
tendencies are blended in the system of Heraclitus. Mysticism is, in
essence, little more than a certain intensity and depth of feeling in
regard to what is believed about the universe; and this kind of
feeling leads Heraclitus, on the basis of his science, to strangely
poignant sayings concerning life and the world, such as:

"Time is a child playing draughts, the kingly power is a child's. "

It is poetic imagination, not science, which presents Time as despotic
lord of the world, with all the irresponsible frivolity of a child. It
is mysticism, too, which leads Heraclitus to assert the identity of
opposites: "Good and ill are one," he says; and again: "To God all
things are fair and good and right, but men hold some things wrong and
some right. "

Much of mysticism underlies the ethics of Heraclitus. It is true that
a scientific determinism alone might have inspired the statement:
"Man's character is his fate"; but only a mystic would have said:

"Every beast is driven to the pasture with blows"; and again:

"It is hard to fight with one's heart's desire. Whatever it wishes to
get, it purchases at the cost of soul"; and again:

"Wisdom is one thing. It is to know the thought by which all things
are steered through all things. "[1]

Examples might be multiplied, but those that have been given are
enough to show the character of the man: the facts of science, as they
appeared to him, fed the flame in his soul, and in its light he saw
into the depths of the world by the reflection of his own dancing
swiftly penetrating fire. In such a nature we see the true union of
the mystic and the man of science--the highest eminence, as I think,
that it is possible to achieve in the world of thought.

In Plato, the same twofold impulse exists, though the mystic impulse
is distinctly the stronger of the two, and secures ultimate victory
whenever the conflict is sharp. His description of the cave is the
classical statement of belief in a knowledge and reality truer and
more real than that of the senses:

"Imagine[2] a number of men living in an underground cavernous
chamber, with an entrance open to the light, extending along the
entire length of the cavern, in which they have been confined, from
their childhood, with their legs and necks so shackled that they
are obliged to sit still and look straight forwards, because their
chains render it impossible for them to turn their heads round: and
imagine a bright fire burning some way off, above and behind them,
and an elevated roadway passing between the fire and the prisoners,
with a low wall built along it, like the screens which conjurors
put up in front of their audience, and above which they exhibit
their wonders.

I have it, he replied.

Also figure to yourself a number of persons walking behind this
wall, and carrying with them statues of men, and images of other
animals, wrought in wood and stone and all kinds of materials,
together with various other articles, which overtop the wall; and,
as you might expect, let some of the passers-by be talking, and
others silent.

You are describing a strange scene, and strange prisoners.

They resemble us, I replied.

Now consider what would happen if the course of nature brought them
a release from their fetters, and a remedy for their foolishness,
in the following manner. Let us suppose that one of them has been
released, and compelled suddenly to stand up, and turn his neck
round and walk with open eyes towards the light; and let us suppose
that he goes through all these actions with pain, and that the
dazzling splendour renders him incapable of discerning those
objects of which he used formerly to see the shadows. What answer
should you expect him to make, if some one were to tell him that in
those days he was watching foolish phantoms, but that now he is
somewhat nearer to reality, and is turned towards things more real,
and sees more correctly; above all, if he were to point out to him
the several objects that are passing by, and question him, and
compel him to answer what they are? Should you not expect him to be
puzzled, and to regard his old visions as truer than the objects
now forced upon his notice?

Yes, much truer. . . .

Hence, I suppose, habit will be necessary to enable him to perceive
objects in that upper world. At first he will be most successful in
distinguishing shadows; then he will discern the reflections of men
and other things in water, and afterwards the realities; and after
this he will raise his eyes to encounter the light of the moon and
stars, finding it less difficult to study the heavenly bodies and
the heaven itself by night, than the sun and the sun's light by
day.

Doubtless.

Last of all, I imagine, he will be able to observe and contemplate
the nature of the sun, not as it _appears_ in water or on alien
ground, but as it is in itself in its own territory.

Of course.

His next step will be to draw the conclusion, that the sun is the
author of the seasons and the years, and the guardian of all things
in the visible world, and in a manner the cause of all those things
which he and his companions used to see.

Obviously, this will be his next step. . . .

Now this imaginary case, my dear Glancon, you must apply in all its
parts to our former statements, by comparing the region which the
eye reveals to the prison house, and the light of the fire therein
to the power of the sun: and if, by the upward ascent and the
contemplation of the upper world, you understand the mounting of
the soul into the intellectual region, you will hit the tendency of
my own surmises, since you desire to be told what they are; though,
indeed, God only knows whether they are correct. But, be that as it
may, the view which I take of the subject is to the following
effect. In the world of knowledge, the essential Form of Good is
the limit of our enquiries, and can barely be perceived; but, when
perceived, we cannot help concluding that it is in every case the
source of all that is bright and beautiful,--in the visible world
giving birth to light and its master, and in the intellectual world
dispensing, immediately and with full authority, truth and
reason;--and that whosoever would act wisely, either in private or
in public, must set this Form of Good before his eyes. "

But in this passage, as throughout most of Plato's teaching, there is
an identification of the good with the truly real, which became
embodied in the philosophical tradition, and is still largely
operative in our own day. In thus allowing a legislative function to
the good, Plato produced a divorce between philosophy and science,
from which, in my opinion, both have suffered ever since and are still
suffering. The man of science, whatever his hopes may be, must lay
them aside while he studies nature; and the philosopher, if he is to
achieve truth, must do the same. Ethical considerations can only
legitimately appear when the truth has been ascertained: they can and
should appear as determining our feeling towards the truth, and our
manner of ordering our lives in view of the truth, but not as
themselves dictating what the truth is to be.

There are passages in Plato--among those which illustrate the
scientific side of his mind--where he seems clearly aware of this. The
most noteworthy is the one in which Socrates, as a young man, is
explaining the theory of ideas to Parmenides.

After Socrates has explained that there is an idea of the good, but
not of such things as hair and mud and dirt, Parmenides advises him
"not to despise even the meanest things," and this advice shows the
genuine scientific temper. It is with this impartial temper that the
mystic's apparent insight into a higher reality and a hidden good has
to be combined if philosophy is to realise its greatest possibilities.
And it is failure in this respect that has made so much of idealistic
philosophy thin, lifeless, and insubstantial. It is only in marriage
with the world that our ideals can bear fruit: divorced from it, they
remain barren. But marriage with the world is not to be achieved by an
ideal which shrinks from fact, or demands in advance that the world
shall conform to its desires.

Parmenides himself is the source of a peculiarly interesting strain
of mysticism which pervades Plato's thought--the mysticism which may
be called "logical" because it is embodied in theories on logic. This
form of mysticism, which appears, so far as the West is concerned, to
have originated with Parmenides, dominates the reasonings of all the
great mystical metaphysicians from his day to that of Hegel and his
modern disciples. Reality, he says, is uncreated, indestructible,
unchanging, indivisible; it is "immovable in the bonds of mighty
chains, without beginning and without end; since coming into being and
passing away have been driven afar, and true belief has cast them
away. " The fundamental principle of his inquiry is stated in a
sentence which would not be out of place in Hegel: "Thou canst not
know what is not--that is impossible--nor utter it; for it is the same
thing that can be thought and that can be. " And again: "It needs must
be that what can be thought and spoken of is; for it is possible for
it to be, and it is not possible for what is nothing to be. " The
impossibility of change follows from this principle; for what is past
can be spoken of, and therefore, by the principle, still is.

Mystical philosophy, in all ages and in all parts of the world, is
characterised by certain beliefs which are illustrated by the
doctrines we have been considering.

There is, first, the belief in insight as against discursive analytic
knowledge: the belief in a way of wisdom, sudden, penetrating,
coercive, which is contrasted with the slow and fallible study of
outward appearance by a science relying wholly upon the senses. All
who are capable of absorption in an inward passion must have
experienced at times the strange feeling of unreality in common
objects, the loss of contact with daily things, in which the solidity
of the outer world is lost, and the soul seems, in utter loneliness,
to bring forth, out of its own depths, the mad dance of fantastic
phantoms which have hitherto appeared as independently real and
living. This is the negative side of the mystic's initiation: the
doubt concerning common knowledge, preparing the way for the reception
of what seems a higher wisdom. Many men to whom this negative
experience is familiar do not pass beyond it, but for the mystic it is
merely the gateway to an ampler world.

The mystic insight begins with the sense of a mystery unveiled, of a
hidden wisdom now suddenly become certain beyond the possibility of a
doubt. The sense of certainty and revelation comes earlier than any
definite belief. The definite beliefs at which mystics arrive are the
result of reflection upon the inarticulate experience gained in the
moment of insight. Often, beliefs which have no real connection with
this moment become subsequently attracted into the central nucleus;
thus in addition to the convictions which all mystics share, we find,
in many of them, other convictions of a more local and temporary
character, which no doubt become amalgamated with what was essentially
mystical in virtue of their subjective certainty. We may ignore such
inessential accretions, and confine ourselves to the beliefs which all
mystics share.

The first and most direct outcome of the moment of illumination is
belief in the possibility of a way of knowledge which may be called
revelation or insight or intuition, as contrasted with sense, reason,
and analysis, which are regarded as blind guides leading to the morass
of illusion. Closely connected with this belief is the conception of a
Reality behind the world of appearance and utterly different from it.
This Reality is regarded with an admiration often amounting to
worship; it is felt to be always and everywhere close at hand, thinly
veiled by the shows of sense, ready, for the receptive mind, to shine
in its glory even through the apparent folly and wickedness of Man.
The poet, the artist, and the lover are seekers after that glory: the
haunting beauty that they pursue is the faint reflection of its sun.
But the mystic lives in the full light of the vision: what others
dimly seek he knows, with a knowledge beside which all other knowledge
is ignorance.

The second characteristic of mysticism is its belief in unity, and its
refusal to admit opposition or division anywhere. We found Heraclitus
saying "good and ill are one"; and again he says, "the way up and the
way down is one and the same. " The same attitude appears in the
simultaneous assertion of contradictory propositions, such as: "We
step and do not step into the same rivers; we are and are not. " The
assertion of Parmenides, that reality is one and indivisible, comes
from the same impulse towards unity. In Plato, this impulse is less
prominent, being held in check by his theory of ideas; but it
reappears, so far as his logic permits, in the doctrine of the primacy
of the Good.

A third mark of almost all mystical metaphysics is the denial of the
reality of Time. This is an outcome of the denial of division; if all
is one, the distinction of past and future must be illusory. We have
seen this doctrine prominent in Parmenides; and among moderns it is
fundamental in the systems of Spinoza and Hegel.

The last of the doctrines of mysticism which we have to consider is
its belief that all evil is mere appearance, an illusion produced by
the divisions and oppositions of the analytic intellect. Mysticism
does not maintain that such things as cruelty, for example, are good,
but it denies that they are real: they belong to that lower world of
phantoms from which we are to be liberated by the insight of the
vision. Sometimes--for example in Hegel, and at least verbally in
Spinoza--not only evil, but good also, is regarded as illusory, though
nevertheless the emotional attitude towards what is held to be Reality
is such as would naturally be associated with the belief that Reality
is good. What is, in all cases, ethically characteristic of mysticism
is absence of indignation or protest, acceptance with joy, disbelief
in the ultimate truth of the division into two hostile camps, the good
and the bad. This attitude is a direct outcome of the nature of the
mystical experience: with its sense of unity is associated a feeling
of infinite peace. Indeed it may be suspected that the feeling of
peace produces, as feelings do in dreams, the whole system of
associated beliefs which make up the body of mystic doctrine. But this
is a difficult question, and one on which it cannot be hoped that
mankind will reach agreement.

Four questions thus arise in considering the truth or falsehood of
mysticism, namely:

I. Are there two ways of knowing, which may be called respectively
reason and intuition? And if so, is either to be preferred to the
other?

II. Is all plurality and division illusory?

III. Is time unreal?

IV. What kind of reality belongs to good and evil?

On all four of these questions, while fully developed mysticism seems
to me mistaken, I yet believe that, by sufficient restraint, there is
an element of wisdom to be learned from the mystical way of feeling,
which does not seem to be attainable in any other manner. If this is
the truth, mysticism is to be commended as an attitude towards life,
not as a creed about the world. The meta-physical creed, I shall
maintain, is a mistaken outcome of the emotion, although this emotion,
as colouring and informing all other thoughts and feelings, is the
inspirer of whatever is best in Man. Even the cautious and patient
investigation of truth by science, which seems the very antithesis of
the mystic's swift certainty, may be fostered and nourished by that
very spirit of reverence in which mysticism lives and moves.


I. REASON AND INTUITION[3]

Of the reality or unreality of the mystic's world I know nothing. I
have no wish to deny it, nor even to declare that the insight which
reveals it is not a genuine insight. What I do wish to maintain--and
it is here that the scientific attitude becomes imperative--is that
insight, untested and unsupported, is an insufficient guarantee of
truth, in spite of the fact that much of the most important truth is
first suggested by its means. It is common to speak of an opposition
between instinct and reason; in the eighteenth century, the opposition
was drawn in favour of reason, but under the influence of Rousseau and
the romantic movement instinct was given the preference, first by
those who rebelled against artificial forms of government and thought,
and then, as the purely rationalistic defence of traditional theology
became increasingly difficult, by all who felt in science a menace to
creeds which they associated with a spiritual outlook on life and the
world. Bergson, under the name of "intuition," has raised instinct to
the position of sole arbiter of metaphysical truth. But in fact the
opposition of instinct and reason is mainly illusory. Instinct,
intuition, or insight is what first leads to the beliefs which
subsequent reason confirms or confutes; but the confirmation, where it
is possible, consists, in the last analysis, of agreement with other
beliefs no less instinctive. Reason is a harmonising, controlling
force rather than a creative one. Even in the most purely logical
realm, it is insight that first arrives at what is new.

Where instinct and reason do sometimes conflict is in regard to single
beliefs, held instinctively, and held with such determination that no
degree of inconsistency with other beliefs leads to their abandonment.
Instinct, like all human faculties, is liable to error. Those in whom
reason is weak are often unwilling to admit this as regards
themselves, though all admit it in regard to others. Where instinct is
least liable to error is in practical matters as to which right
judgment is a help to survival: friendship and hostility in others,
for instance, are often felt with extraordinary discrimination through
very careful disguises. But even in such matters a wrong impression
may be given by reserve or flattery; and in matters less directly
practical, such as philosophy deals with, very strong instinctive
beliefs are sometimes wholly mistaken, as we may come to know through
their perceived inconsistency with other equally strong beliefs. It is
such considerations that necessitate the harmonising mediation of
reason, which tests our beliefs by their mutual compatibility, and
examines, in doubtful cases, the possible sources of error on the one
side and on the other. In this there is no opposition to instinct as a
whole, but only to blind reliance upon some one interesting aspect of
instinct to the exclusion of other more commonplace but not less
trustworthy aspects. It is such one-sidedness, not instinct itself,
that reason aims at correcting.

These more or less trite maxims may be illustrated by application to
Bergson's advocacy of "intuition" as against "intellect. " There are,
he says, "two profoundly different ways of knowing a thing. The first
implies that we move round the object: the second that we enter into
it. The first depends on the point of view at which we are placed and
on the symbols by which we express ourselves. The second neither
depends on a point of view nor relies on any symbol. The first kind of
knowledge may be said to stop at the _relative_; the second, in those
cases where it is possible, to attain the _absolute_. "[4] The second
of these, which is intuition, is, he says, "the kind of _intellectual
sympathy_ by which one places oneself within an object in order to
coincide with what is unique in it and therefore inexpressible" (p.
6). In illustration, he mentions self-knowledge: "there is one
reality, at least, which we all seize from within, by intuition and
not by simple analysis. It is our own personality in its flowing
through time--our self which endures" (p. 8). The rest of Bergson's
philosophy consists in reporting, through the imperfect medium of
words, the knowledge gained by intuition, and the consequent complete
condemnation of all the pretended knowledge derived from science and
common sense.

This procedure, since it takes sides in a conflict of instinctive
beliefs, stands in need of justification by proving the greater
trustworthiness of the beliefs on one side than of those on the other.
Bergson attempts this justification in two ways, first by explaining
that intellect is a purely practical faculty to secure biological
success, secondly by mentioning remarkable feats of instinct in
animals and by pointing out characteristics of the world which, though
intuition can apprehend them, are baffling to intellect as he
interprets it.

Of Bergson's theory that intellect is a purely practical faculty,
developed in the struggle for survival, and not a source of true
beliefs, we may say, first, that it is only through intellect that we
know of the struggle for survival and of the biological ancestry of
man: if the intellect is misleading, the whole of this merely inferred
history is presumably untrue. If, on the other hand, we agree with him
in thinking that evolution took place as Darwin believed, then it is
not only intellect, but all our faculties, that have been developed
under the stress of practical utility. Intuition is seen at its best
where it is directly useful, for example in regard to other people's
characters and dispositions. Bergson apparently holds that capacity
for this kind of knowledge is less explicable by the struggle for
existence than, for example, capacity for pure mathematics. Yet the
savage deceived by false friendship is likely to pay for his mistake
with his life; whereas even in the most civilised societies men are
not put to death for mathematical incompetence. All the most striking
of his instances of intuition in animals have a very direct survival
value. The fact is, of course, that both intuition and intellect have
been developed because they are useful, and that, speaking broadly,
they are useful when they give truth and become harmful when they give
falsehood. Intellect, in civilised man, like artistic capacity, has
occasionally been developed beyond the point where it is useful to the
individual; intuition, on the other hand, seems on the whole to
diminish as civilisation increases. It is greater, as a rule, in
children than in adults, in the uneducated than in the educated.
Probably in dogs it exceeds anything to be found in human beings. But
those who see in these facts a recommendation of intuition ought to
return to running wild in the woods, dyeing themselves with woad and
living on hips and haws.

Let us next examine whether intuition possesses any such infallibility
as Bergson claims for it. The best instance of it, according to him,
is our acquaintance with ourselves; yet self-knowledge is proverbially
rare and difficult. Most men, for example, have in their nature
meannesses, vanities, and envies of which they are quite unconscious,
though even their best friends can perceive them without any
difficulty. It is true that intuition has a convincingness which is
lacking to intellect: while it is present, it is almost impossible to
doubt its truth. But if it should appear, on examination, to be at
least as fallible as intellect, its greater subjective certainty
becomes a demerit, making it only the more irresistibly deceptive.
Apart from self-knowledge, one of the most notable examples of
intuition is the knowledge people believe themselves to possess of
those with whom they are in love: the wall between different
personalities seems to become transparent, and people think they see
into another soul as into their own. Yet deception in such cases is
constantly practised with success; and even where there is no
intentional deception, experience gradually proves, as a rule, that
the supposed insight was illusory, and that the slower more groping
methods of the intellect are in the long run more reliable.

Bergson maintains that intellect can only deal with things in so far
as they resemble what has been experienced in the past, while
intuition has the power of apprehending the uniqueness and novelty
that always belong to each fresh moment. That there is something
unique and new at every moment, is certainly true; it is also true
that this cannot be fully expressed by means of intellectual concepts.
Only direct acquaintance can give knowledge of what is unique and new.
But direct acquaintance of this kind is given fully in sensation, and
does not require, so far as I can see, any special faculty of
intuition for its apprehension. It is neither intellect nor intuition,
but sensation, that supplies new data; but when the data are new in
any remarkable manner, intellect is much more capable of dealing with
them than intuition would be. The hen with a brood of ducklings no
doubt has intuition which seems to place her inside them, and not
merely to know them analytically; but when the ducklings take to the
water, the whole apparent intuition is seen to be illusory, and the
hen is left helpless on the shore. Intuition, in fact, is an aspect
and development of instinct, and, like all instinct, is admirable in
those customary surroundings which have moulded the habits of the
animal in question, but totally incompetent as soon as the
surroundings are changed in a way which demands some non-habitual mode
of action.

The theoretical understanding of the world, which is the aim of
philosophy, is not a matter of great practical importance to animals,
or to savages, or even to most civilised men. It is hardly to be
supposed, therefore, that the rapid, rough and ready methods of
instinct or intuition will find in this field a favourable ground for
their application. It is the older kinds of activity, which bring out
our kinship with remote generations of animal and semi-human
ancestors, that show intuition at its best. In such matters as
self-preservation and love, intuition will act sometimes (though not
always) with a swiftness and precision which are astonishing to the
critical intellect. But philosophy is not one of the pursuits which
illustrate our affinity with the past: it is a highly refined, highly
civilised pursuit, demanding, for its success, a certain liberation
from the life of instinct, and even, at times, a certain aloofness
from all mundane hopes and fears. It is not in philosophy, therefore,
that we can hope to see intuition at its best. On the contrary, since
the true objects of philosophy, and the habit of thought demanded for
their apprehension, are strange, unusual, and remote, it is here, more
almost than anywhere else, that intellect proves superior to
intuition, and that quick unanalysed convictions are least deserving
of uncritical acceptance.

In advocating the scientific restraint and balance, as against the
self-assertion of a confident reliance upon intuition, we are only
urging, in the sphere of knowledge, that largeness of contemplation,
that impersonal disinterestedness, and that freedom from practical
preoccupations which have been inculcated by all the great religions
of the world. Thus our conclusion, however it may conflict with the
explicit beliefs of many mystics, is, in essence, not contrary to the
spirit which inspires those beliefs, but rather the outcome of this
very spirit as applied in the realm of thought.


II. UNITY AND PLURALITY

One of the most convincing aspects of the mystic illumination is the
apparent revelation of the oneness of all things, giving rise to
pantheism in religion and to monism in philosophy. An elaborate logic,
beginning with Parmenides, and culminating in Hegel and his followers,
has been gradually developed, to prove that the universe is one
indivisible Whole, and that what seem to be its parts, if considered
as substantial and self-existing, are mere illusion. The conception
of a Reality quite other than the world of appearance, a reality one,
indivisible, and unchanging, was introduced into Western philosophy by
Parmenides, not, nominally at least, for mystical or religious
reasons, but on the basis of a logical argument as to the
impossibility of not-being, and most subsequent metaphysical systems
are the outcome of this fundamental idea.

The logic used in defence of mysticism seems to be faulty as logic,
and open to technical criticisms, which I have explained elsewhere. I
shall not here repeat these criticisms, since they are lengthy and
difficult, but shall instead attempt an analysis of the state of mind
from which mystical logic has arisen.

Belief in a reality quite different from what appears to the senses
arises with irresistible force in certain moods, which are the source
of most mysticism, and of most metaphysics. While such a mood is
dominant, the need of logic is not felt, and accordingly the more
thoroughgoing mystics do not employ logic, but appeal directly to the
immediate deliverance of their insight. But such fully developed
mysticism is rare in the West. When the intensity of emotional
conviction subsides, a man who is in the habit of reasoning will
search for logical grounds in favour of the belief which he finds in
himself. But since the belief already exists, he will be very
hospitable to any ground that suggests itself. The paradoxes
apparently proved by his logic are really the paradoxes of mysticism,
and are the goal which he feels his logic must reach if it is to be in
accordance with insight. The resulting logic has rendered most
philosophers incapable of giving any account of the world of science
and daily life. If they had been anxious to give such an account, they
would probably have discovered the errors of their logic; but most of
them were less anxious to understand the world of science and daily
life than to convict it of unreality in the interests of a
super-sensible "real" world.

It is in this way that logic has been pursued by those of the great
philosophers who were mystics. But since they usually took for granted
the supposed insight of the mystic emotion, their logical doctrines
were presented with a certain dryness, and were believed by their
disciples to be quite independent of the sudden illumination from
which they sprang. Nevertheless their origin clung to them, and they
remained--to borrow a useful word from Mr. Santayana--"malicious" in
regard to the world of science and common sense. It is only so that we
can account for the complacency with which philosophers have accepted
the inconsistency of their doctrines with all the common and
scientific facts which seem best established and most worthy of
belief.

The logic of mysticism shows, as is natural, the defects which are
inherent in anything malicious. The impulse to logic, not felt while
the mystic mood is dominant, reasserts itself as the mood fades, but
with a desire to retain the vanishing insight, or at least to prove
that it _was_ insight, and that what seems to contradict it is
illusion. The logic which thus arises is not quite disinterested or
candid, and is inspired by a certain hatred of the daily world to
which it is to be applied. Such an attitude naturally does not tend to
the best results. Everyone knows that to read an author simply in
order to refute him is not the way to understand him; and to read the
book of Nature with a conviction that it is all illusion is just as
unlikely to lead to understanding. If our logic is to find the common
world intelligible, it must not be hostile, but must be inspired by a
genuine acceptance such as is not usually to be found among
metaphysicians.


III. TIME

The unreality of time is a cardinal doctrine of many metaphysical
systems, often nominally based, as already by Parmenides, upon logical
arguments, but originally derived, at any rate in the founders of new
systems, from the certainty which is born in the moment of mystic
insight. As a Persian Sufi poet says:

"Past and future are what veil God from our sight.
Burn up both of them with fire! How long
Wilt thou be partitioned by these segments as a reed? "[5]

The belief that what is ultimately real must be immutable is a very
common one: it gave rise to the metaphysical notion of substance, and
finds, even now, a wholly illegitimate satisfaction in such scientific
doctrines as the conservation of energy and mass.

It is difficult to disentangle the truth and the error in this view.
The arguments for the contention that time is unreal and that the
world of sense is illusory must, I think, be regarded as fallacious.
Nevertheless there is some sense--easier to feel than to state--in
which time is an unimportant and superficial characteristic of
reality. Past and future must be acknowledged to be as real as the
present, and a certain emancipation from slavery to time is essential
to philosophic thought. The importance of time is rather practical
than theoretical, rather in relation to our desires than in relation
to truth.
A truer image of the world, I think, is obtained by
picturing things as entering into the stream of time from an eternal
world outside, than from a view which regards time as the devouring
tyrant of all that is. Both in thought and in feeling, even though
time be real, to realise the unimportance of time is the gate of
wisdom.

That this is the case may be seen at once by asking ourselves why our
feelings towards the past are so different from our feelings towards
the future. The reason for this difference is wholly practical: our
wishes can affect the future but not the past, the future is to some
extent subject to our power, while the past is unalterably fixed. But
every future will some day be past: if we see the past truly now, it
must, when it was still future, have been just what we now see it to
be, and what is now future must be just what we shall see it to be
when it has become past. The felt difference of quality between past
and future, therefore, is not an intrinsic difference, but only a
difference in relation to us: to impartial contemplation, it ceases to
exist. And impartiality of contemplation is, in the intellectual
sphere, that very same virtue of disinterestedness which, in the
sphere of action, appears as justice and unselfishness. Whoever wishes
to see the world truly, to rise in thought above the tyranny of
practical desires, must learn to overcome the difference of attitude
towards past and future, and to survey the whole stream of time in one
comprehensive vision.

The kind of way in which, as it seems to me, time ought not to enter
into our theoretic philosophical thought, may be illustrated by the
philosophy which has become associated with the idea of evolution, and
which is exemplified by Nietzsche, pragmatism, and Bergson. This
philosophy, on the basis of the development which has led from the
lowest forms of life up to man, sees in _progress_ the fundamental law
of the universe, and thus admits the difference between _earlier_ and
_later_ into the very citadel of its contemplative outlook. With its
past and future history of the world, conjectural as it is, I do not
wish to quarrel. But I think that, in the intoxication of a quick
success, much that is required for a true understanding of the
universe has been forgotten. Something of Hellenism, something, too,
of Oriental resignation, must be combined with its hurrying Western
self-assertion before it can emerge from the ardour of youth into the
mature wisdom of manhood. In spite of its appeals to science, the true
scientific philosophy, I think, is something more arduous and more
aloof, appealing to less mundane hopes, and requiring a severer
discipline for its successful practice.

Darwin's _Origin of Species_ persuaded the world that the difference
between different species of animals and plants is not the fixed
immutable difference that it appears to be. The doctrine of natural
kinds, which had rendered classification easy and definite, which was
enshrined in the Aristotelian tradition, and protected by its supposed
necessity for orthodox dogma, was suddenly swept away for ever out of
the biological world. The difference between man and the lower
animals, which to our human conceit appears enormous, was shown to be
a gradual achievement, involving intermediate being who could not with
certainty be placed either within or without the human family. The sun
and the planets had already been shown by Laplace to be very probably
derived from a primitive more or less undifferentiated nebula. Thus
the old fixed landmarks became wavering and indistinct, and all sharp
outlines were blurred. Things and species lost their boundaries, and
none could say where they began or where they ended.

But if human conceit was staggered for a moment by its kinship with
the ape, it soon found a way to reassert itself, and that way is the
"philosophy" of evolution. A process which led from the amoeba to Man
appeared to the philosophers to be obviously a progress--though
whether the amoeba would agree with this opinion is not known. Hence
the cycle of changes which science had shown to be the probable
history of the past was welcomed as revealing a law of development
towards good in the universe--an evolution or unfolding of an idea
slowly embodying itself in the actual. But such a view, though it
might satisfy Spencer and those whom we may call Hegelian
evolutionists, could not be accepted as adequate by the more
whole-hearted votaries of change. An ideal to which the world
continuously approaches is, to these minds, too dead and static to be
inspiring. Not only the aspiration, but the ideal too, must change and
develop with the course of evolution: there must be no fixed goal, but
a continual fashioning of fresh needs by the impulse which is life and
which alone gives unity to the process.

Life, in this philosophy, is a continuous stream, in which all
divisions are artificial and unreal. Separate things, beginnings and
endings, are mere convenient fictions: there is only smooth unbroken
transition. The beliefs of to-day may count as true to-day, if they
carry us along the stream; but to-morrow they will be false, and must
be replaced by new beliefs to meet the new situation. All our thinking
consists of convenient fictions, imaginary congealings of the stream:
reality flows on in spite of all our fictions, and though it can be
lived, it cannot be conceived in thought. Somehow, without explicit
statement, the assurance is slipped in that the future, though we
cannot foresee it, will be better than the past or the present: the
reader is like the child which expects a sweet because it has been
told to open its mouth and shut its eyes. Logic, mathematics, physics
disappear in this philosophy, because they are too "static"; what is
real is no impulse and movement towards a goal which, like the
rainbow, recedes as we advance, and makes every place different when
it reaches it from what it appeared to be at a distance.

I do not propose to enter upon a technical examination of this
philosophy. I wish only to maintain that the motives and interests
which inspire it are so exclusively practical, and the problems with
which it deals are so special, that it can hardly be regarded as
touching any of the questions that, to my mind, constitute genuine
philosophy.

The predominant interest of evolutionism is in the question of human
destiny, or at least of the destiny of Life. It is more interested in
morality and happiness than in knowledge for its own sake. It must be
admitted that the same may be said of many other philosophies, and
that a desire for the kind of knowledge which philosophy can give is
very rare. But if philosophy is to attain truth, it is necessary first
and foremost that philosophers should acquire the disinterested
intellectual curiosity which characterises the genuine man of science.
Knowledge concerning the future--which is the kind of knowledge that
must be sought if we are to know about human destiny--is possible
within certain narrow limits. It is impossible to say how much the
limits may be enlarged with the progress of science. But what is
evident is that any proposition about the future belongs by its
subject-matter to some particular science, and is to be ascertained,
if at all, by the methods of that science. Philosophy is not a short
cut to the same kind of results as those of the other sciences: if it
is to be a genuine study, it must have a province of its own, and aim
at results which the other sciences can neither prove nor disprove.

Evolutionism, in basing itself upon the notion of _progress_, which is
change from the worse to the better, allows the notion of time, as it
seems to me, to become its tyrant rather than its servant, and thereby
loses that impartiality of contemplation which is the source of all
that is best in philosophic thought and feeling. Metaphysicians, as we
saw, have frequently denied altogether the reality of time. I do not
wish to do this; I wish only to preserve the mental outlook which
inspired the denial, the attitude which, in thought, regards the past
as having the same reality as the present and the same importance as
the future. "In so far," says Spinoza,[6] "as the mind conceives a
thing according to the dictate of reason, it will be equally affected
whether the idea is that of a future, past, or present thing. " It is
this "conceiving according to the dictate of reason" that I find
lacking in the philosophy which is based on evolution.


IV. GOOD AND EVIL

Mysticism maintains that all evil is illusory, and sometimes maintains
the same view as regards good, but more often holds that all Reality
is good. Both views are to be found in Heraclitus: "Good and ill are
one," he says, but again, "To God all things are fair and good and
right, but men hold some things wrong and some right. " A similar
twofold position is to be found in Spinoza, but he uses the word
"perfection" when he means to speak of the good that is not merely
human. "By reality and perfection I mean the same thing," he says;[7]
but elsewhere we find the definition: "By _good_ I shall mean that
which we certainly know to be useful to us. "[8] Thus perfection
belongs to Reality in its own nature, but goodness is relative to
ourselves and our needs, and disappears in an impartial survey. Some
such distinction, I think, is necessary in order to understand the
ethical outlook of mysticism: there is a lower mundane kind of good
and evil, which divides the world of appearance into what seem to be
conflicting parts; but there is also a higher, mystical kind of good,
which belongs to Reality and is not opposed by any correlative kind of
evil.

It is difficult to give a logically tenable account of this position
without recognising that good and evil are subjective, that what is
good is merely that towards which we have one kind of feeling, and
what is evil is merely that towards which we have another kind of
feeling. In our active life, where we have to exercise choice, and to
prefer this to that of two possible acts, it is necessary to have a
distinction of good and evil, or at least of better and worse. But
this distinction, like everything pertaining to action, belongs to
what mysticism regards as the world of illusion, if only because it is
essentially concerned with time. In our contemplative life, where
action is not called for, it is possible to be impartial, and to
overcome the ethical dualism which action requires. So long as we
remain _merely_ impartial, we may be content to say that both the good
and the evil of action are illusions. But if, as we must do if we have
the mystic vision, we find the whole world worthy of love and worship,
if we see

"The earth, and every common sight. . . .
Apparell'd in celestial light,"

we shall say that there is a higher good than that of action, and that
this higher good belongs to the whole world as it is in reality. In
this way the twofold attitude and the apparent vacillation of
mysticism are explained and justified.

The possibility of this universal love and joy in all that exists is
of supreme importance for the conduct and happiness of life, and gives
inestimable value to the mystic emotion, apart from any creeds which
may be built upon it. But if we are not to be led into false beliefs,
it is necessary to realise exactly _what_ the mystic emotion reveals.
It reveals a possibility of human nature--a possibility of a nobler,
happier, freer life than any that can be otherwise achieved. But it
does not reveal anything about the non-human, or about the nature of
the universe in general. Good and bad, and even the higher good that
mysticism finds everywhere, are the reflections of our own emotions on
other things, not part of the substance of things as they are in
themselves. And therefore an impartial contemplation, freed from all
pre-occupation with Self, will not judge things good or bad, although
it is very easily combined with that feeling of universal love which
leads the mystic to say that the whole world is good.

The philosophy of evolution, through the notion of progress, is bound
up with the ethical dualism of the worse and the better, and is thus
shut out, not only from the kind of survey which discards good and
evil altogether from its view, but also from the mystical belief in
the goodness of everything. In this way the distinction of good and
evil, like time, becomes a tyrant in this philosophy, and introduces
into thought the restless selectiveness of action. Good and evil, like
time, are, it would seem, not general or fundamental in the world of
thought, but late and highly specialised members of the intellectual
hierarchy.

Although, as we saw, mysticism can be interpreted so as to agree with
the view that good and evil are not intellectually fundamental, it
must be admitted that here we are no longer in verbal agreement with
most of the great philosophers and religious teachers of the past. I
believe, however, that the elimination of ethical considerations from
philosophy is both scientifically necessary and--though this may seem
a paradox--an ethical advance. Both these contentions must be briefly
defended.

The hope of satisfaction to our more human desires--the hope of
demonstrating that the world has this or that desirable ethical
characteristic--is not one which, so far as I can see, a scientific
philosophy can do anything whatever to satisfy. The difference between
a good world and a bad one is a difference in the particular
characteristics of the particular things that exist in these worlds:
it is not a sufficiently abstract difference to come within the
province of philosophy. Love and hate, for example, are ethical
opposites, but to philosophy they are closely analogous attitudes
towards objects. The general form and structure of those attitudes
towards objects which constitute mental phenomena is a problem for
philosophy, but the difference between love and hate is not a
difference of form or structure, and therefore belongs rather to the
special science of psychology than to philosophy. Thus the ethical
interests which have often inspired philosophers must remain in the
background: some kind of ethical interest may inspire the whole study,
but none must obtrude in the detail or be expected in the special
results which are sought.

If this view seems at first sight disappointing, we may remind
ourselves that a similar change has been found necessary in all the
other sciences. The physicist or chemist is not now required to prove
the ethical importance of his ions or atoms; the biologist is not
expected to prove the utility of the plants or animals which he
dissects. In pre-scientific ages this was not the case. Astronomy, for
example, was studied because men believed in astrology: it was thought
that the movements of the planets had the most direct and important
bearing upon the lives of human beings. Presumably, when this belief
decayed and the disinterested study of astronomy began, many who had
found astrology absorbingly interesting decided that astronomy had too
little human interest to be worthy of study. Physics, as it appears in
Plato's Timaeus for example, is full of ethical notions: it is an
essential part of its purpose to show that the earth is worthy of
admiration. The modern physicist, on the contrary, though he has no
wish to deny that the earth is admirable, is not concerned, as
physicist, with its ethical attributes: he is merely concerned to find
out facts, not to consider whether they are good or bad. In
psychology, the scientific attitude is even more recent and more
difficult than in the physical sciences: it is natural to consider
that human nature is either good or bad, and to suppose that the
difference between good and bad, so all-important in practice, must be
important in theory also. It is only during the last century that an
ethically neutral psychology has grown up; and here too, ethical
neutrality has been essential to scientific success.

In philosophy, hitherto, ethical neutrality has been seldom sought and
hardly ever achieved. Men have remembered their wishes, and have
judged philosophies in relation to their wishes. Driven from the
particular sciences, the belief that the notions of good and evil must
afford a key to the understanding of the world has sought a refuge in
philosophy. But even from this last refuge, if philosophy is not to
remain a set of pleasing dreams, this belief must be driven forth. It
is a commonplace that happiness is not best achieved by those who
seek it directly; and it would seem that the same is true of the good.
In thought, at any rate, those who forget good and evil and seek only
to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view
the world through the distorting medium of their own desires.

We are thus brought back to our seeming paradox, that a philosophy
which does not seek to impose upon the world its own conceptions of
good and evil is not only more likely to achieve truth, but is also
the outcome of a higher ethical standpoint than one which, like
evolutionism and most traditional systems, is perpetually appraising
the universe and seeking to find in it an embodiment of present
ideals. In religion, and in every deeply serious view of the world and
of human destiny, there is an element of submission, a realisation of
the limits of human power, which is somewhat lacking in the modern
world, with its quick material successes and its insolent belief in
the boundless possibilities of progress. "He that loveth his life
shall lose it"; and there is danger lest, through a too confident love
of life, life itself should lose much of what gives it its highest
worth. The submission which religion inculcates in action is
essentially the same in spirit as that which science teaches in
thought; and the ethical neutrality by which its victories have been
achieved is the outcome of that submission.

The good which it concerns us to remember is the good which it lies in
our power to create--the good in our own lives and in our attitude
towards the world. Insistence on belief in an external realisation of
the good is a form of self-assertion, which, while it cannot secure
the external good which it desires, can seriously impair the inward
good which lies within our power, and destroy that reverence towards
fact which constitutes both what is valuable in humility and what is
fruitful in the scientific temper.

Human beings cannot, of course, wholly transcend human nature;
something subjective, if only the interest that determines the
direction of our attention, must remain in all our thought. But
scientific philosophy comes nearer to objectivity than any other human
pursuit, and gives us, therefore, the closest constant and the most
intimate relation with the outer world that it is possible to achieve.
To the primitive mind, everything is either friendly or hostile; but
experience has shown that friendliness and hostility are not the
conceptions by which the world is to be understood. Scientific
philosophy thus represents, though as yet only in a nascent condition,
a higher form of thought than any pre-scientific belief or
imagination, and, like every approach to self-transcendence, it brings
with it a rich reward in increase of scope and breadth and
comprehension. Evolutionism, in spite of its appeals to particular
scientific facts, fails to be a truly scientific philosophy because of
its slavery to time, its ethical preoccupations, and its predominant
interest in our mundane concerns and destiny. A truly scientific
philosophy will be more humble, more piecemeal, more arduous, offering
less glitter of outward mirage to flatter fallacious hopes, but more
indifferent to fate, and more capable of accepting the world without
the tyrannous imposition of our human and temporary demands.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] All the above quotations are from Burnet's _Early Greek
Philosophy_, (2nd ed. , 1908), pp. 146-156.

[2] _Republic_, 514, translated by Davies and Vaughan.

[3] This section, and also one or two pages in later sections, have
been printed in a course of Lowell lectures _On our knowledge of the
external world_, published by the Open Court Publishing Company. But I
have left them here, as this is the context for which they were
originally written.

[4] _Introduction to Metaphysics_, p. 1.

[5] Whinfield's translation of the _Masnavi_ (Trubner, 1887), p. 34.

[6] _Ethics_, Bk. IV, Prop. LXII.

[7] Ib. , Pt. IV, Df. I.

[8] _Ethics_. Pt. II. Df. VI.




II

THE PLACE OF SCIENCE IN A LIBERAL EDUCATION


I

Science, to the ordinary reader of newspapers, is represented by a
varying selection of sensational triumphs, such as wireless telegraphy
and aeroplanes, radio-activity and the marvels of modern alchemy. It is
not of this aspect of science that I wish to speak. Science, in this
aspect, consists of detached up-to-date fragments, interesting only
until they are replaced by something newer and more up-to-date,
displaying nothing of the systems of patiently constructed knowledge
out of which, almost as a casual incident, have come the practically
useful results which interest the man in the street. The increased
command over the forces of nature which is derived from science is
undoubtedly an amply sufficient reason for encouraging scientific
research, but this reason has been so often urged and is so easily
appreciated that other reasons, to my mind quite as important, are apt
to be overlooked. It is with these other reasons, especially with the
intrinsic value of a scientific habit of mind in forming our outlook
on the world, that I shall be concerned in what follows.

The instance of wireless telegraphy will serve to illustrate the
difference between the two points of view. Almost all the serious
intellectual labour required for the possibility of this invention is
due to three men--Faraday, Maxwell, and Hertz. In alternating layers
of experiment and theory these three men built up the modern theory of
electromagnetism, and demonstrated the identity of light with
electromagnetic waves. The system which they discovered is one of
profound intellectual interest, bringing together and unifying an
endless variety of apparently detached phenomena, and displaying a
cumulative mental power which cannot but afford delight to every
generous spirit. The mechanical details which remained to be adjusted
in order to utilise their discoveries for a practical system of
telegraphy demanded, no doubt, very considerable ingenuity, but had
not that broad sweep and that universality which could give them
intrinsic interest as an object of disinterested contemplation.

From the point of view of training the mind, of giving that
well-informed, impersonal outlook which constitutes culture in the
good sense of this much-misused word, it seems to be generally held
indisputable that a literary education is superior to one based on
science. Even the warmest advocates of science are apt to rest their
claims on the contention that culture ought to be sacrificed to
utility. Those men of science who respect culture, when they associate
with men learned in the classics, are apt to admit, not merely
politely, but sincerely, a certain inferiority on their side,
compensated doubtless by the services which science renders to
humanity, but none the less real. And so long as this attitude exists
among men of science, it tends to verify itself: the intrinsically
valuable aspects of science tend to be sacrificed to the merely
useful, and little attempt is made to preserve that leisurely,
systematic survey by which the finer quality of mind is formed and
nourished.

But even if there be, in present fact, any such inferiority as is
supposed in the educational value of science, this is, I believe, not
the fault of science itself, but the fault of the spirit in which
science is taught. If its full possibilities were realised by those
who teach it, I believe that its capacity of producing those habits of
mind which constitute the highest mental excellence would be at least
as great as that of literature, and more particularly of Greek and
Latin literature. In saying this I have no wish whatever to disparage
a classical education. I have not myself enjoyed its benefits, and my
knowledge of Greek and Latin authors is derived almost wholly from
translations. But I am firmly persuaded that the Greeks fully deserve
all the admiration that is bestowed upon them, and that it is a very
great and serious loss to be unacquainted with their writings. It is
not by attacking them, but by drawing attention to neglected
excellences in science, that I wish to conduct my argument.

One defect, however, does seem inherent in a purely classical
education--namely, a too exclusive emphasis on the past. By the study
of what is absolutely ended and can never be renewed, a habit of
criticism towards the present and the future is engendered. The
qualities in which the present excels are qualities to which the study
of the past does not direct attention, and to which, therefore, the
student of Greek civilisation may easily become blind. In what is new
and growing there is apt to be something crude, insolent, even a
little vulgar, which is shocking to the man of sensitive taste;
quivering from the rough contact, he retires to the trim gardens of a
polished past, forgetting that they were reclaimed from the wilderness
by men as rough and earth-soiled as those from whom he shrinks in his
own day. The habit of being unable to recognise merit until it is
dead is too apt to be the result of a purely bookish life, and a
culture based wholly on the past will seldom be able to pierce through
everyday surroundings to the essential splendour of contemporary
things, or to the hope of still greater splendour in the future.

"My eyes saw not the men of old;
And now their age away has rolled.
I weep--to think I shall not see
The heroes of posterity. "

So says the Chinese poet; but such impartiality is rare in the more
pugnacious atmosphere of the West, where the champions of past and
future fight a never-ending battle, instead of combining to seek out
the merits of both.

This consideration, which militates not only against the exclusive
study of the classics, but against every form of culture which has
become static, traditional, and academic, leads inevitably to the
fundamental question: What is the true end of education? But before
attempting to answer this question it will be well to define the sense
in which we are to use the word "education. " For this purpose I shall
distinguish the sense in which I mean to use it from two others, both
perfectly legitimate, the one broader and the other narrower than the
sense in which I mean to use the word.

In the broader sense, education will include not only what we learn
through instruction, but all that we learn through personal
experience--the formation of character through the education of life.
Of this aspect of education, vitally important as it is, I will say
nothing, since its consideration would introduce topics quite foreign
to the question with which we are concerned.

In the narrower sense, education may be confined to instruction, the
imparting of definite information on various subjects, because such
information, in and for itself, is useful in daily life. Elementary
education--reading, writing, and arithmetic--is almost wholly of this
kind. But instruction, necessary as it is, does not _per se_
constitute education in the sense in which I wish to consider it.

Education, in the sense in which I mean it, may be defined as _the
formation, by means of instruction, of certain mental habits and a
certain outlook on life and the world_. It remains to ask ourselves,
what mental habits, and what sort of outlook, can be hoped for as the
result of instruction? When we have answered this question we can
attempt to decide what science has to contribute to the formation of
the habits and outlook which we desire.

Our whole life is built about a certain number--not a very small
number--of primary instincts and impulses. Only what is in some way
connected with these instincts and impulses appears to us desirable or
important; there is no faculty, whether "reason" or "virtue" or
whatever it may be called, that can take our active life and our hopes
and fears outside the region controlled by these first movers of all
desire. Each of them is like a queen-bee, aided by a hive of workers
gathering honey; but when the queen is gone the workers languish and
die, and the cells remain empty of their expected sweetness. So with
each primary impulse in civilised man: it is surrounded and protected
by a busy swarm of attendant derivative desires, which store up in its
service whatever honey the surrounding world affords. But if the
queen-impulse dies, the death-dealing influence, though retarded a
little by habit, spreads slowly through all the subsidiary impulses,
and a whole tract of life becomes inexplicably colourless. What was
formerly full of zest, and so obviously worth doing that it raised no
questions, has now grown dreary and purposeless: with a sense of
disillusion we inquire the meaning of life, and decide, perhaps, that
all is vanity. The search for an outside meaning that can _compel_ an
inner response must always be disappointed: all "meaning" must be at
bottom related to our primary desires, and when they are extinct no
miracle can restore to the world the value which they reflected upon
it.

The purpose of education, therefore, cannot be to create any primary
impulse which is lacking in the uneducated; the purpose can only be to
enlarge the scope of those that human nature provides, by increasing
the number and variety of attendant thoughts, and by showing where the
most permanent satisfaction is to be found. Under the impulse of a
Calvinistic horror of the "natural man," this obvious truth has been
too often misconceived in the training of the young; "nature" has been
falsely regarded as excluding all that is best in what is natural, and
the endeavour to teach virtue has led to the production of stunted and
contorted hypocrites instead of full-grown human beings. From such
mistakes in education a better psychology or a kinder heart is
beginning to preserve the present generation; we need, therefore,
waste no more words on the theory that the purpose of education is to
thwart or eradicate nature.

But although nature must supply the initial force of desire, nature is
not, in the civilised man, the spasmodic, fragmentary, and yet violent
set of impulses that it is in the savage. Each impulse has its
constitutional ministry of thought and knowledge and reflection,
through which possible conflicts of impulses are foreseen, and
temporary impulses are controlled by the unifying impulse which may be
called wisdom. In this way education destroys the crudity of
instinct, and increases through knowledge the wealth and variety of
the individual's contacts with the outside world, making him no longer
an isolated fighting unit, but a citizen of the universe, embracing
distant countries, remote regions of space, and vast stretches of past
and future within the circle of his interests. It is this simultaneous
softening in the insistence of desire and enlargement of its scope
that is the chief moral end of education.

Closely connected with this moral end is the more purely intellectual
aim of education, the endeavour to make us see and imagine the world
in an objective manner, as far as possible as it is in itself, and not
merely through the distorting medium of personal desire. The complete
attainment of such an objective view is no doubt an ideal,
indefinitely approachable, but not actually and fully realisable.
Education, considered as a process of forming our mental habits and
our outlook on the world, is to be judged successful in proportion as
its outcome approximates to this ideal; in proportion, that is to say,
as it gives us a true view of our place in society, of the relation of
the whole human society to its non-human environment, and of the
nature of the non-human world as it is in itself apart from our
desires and interests. If this standard is admitted, we can return to
the consideration of science, inquiring how far science contributes to
such an aim, and whether it is in any respect superior to its rivals
in educational practice.


II

Two opposite and at first sight conflicting merits belong to science
as against literature and art. The one, which is not inherently
necessary, but is certainly true at the present day, is hopefulness
as to the future of human achievement, and in particular as to the
useful work that may be accomplished by any intelligent student. This
merit and the cheerful outlook which it engenders prevent what might
otherwise be the depressing effect of another aspect of science, to my
mind also a merit, and perhaps its greatest merit--I mean the
irrelevance of human passions and of the whole subjective apparatus
where scientific truth is concerned. Each of these reasons for
preferring the study of science requires some amplification. Let us
begin with the first.

In the study of literature or art our attention is perpetually riveted
upon the past: the men of Greece or of the Renaissance did better than
any men do now; the triumphs of former ages, so far from facilitating
fresh triumphs in our own age, actually increase the difficulty of
fresh triumphs by rendering originality harder of attainment; not only
is artistic achievement not cumulative, but it seems even to depend
upon a certain freshness and _naivete_ of impulse and vision which
civilisation tends to destroy. Hence comes, to those who have been
nourished on the literary and artistic productions of former ages, a
certain peevishness and undue fastidiousness towards the present, from
which there seems no escape except into the deliberate vandalism which
ignores tradition and in the search after originality achieves only
the eccentric. But in such vandalism there is none of the simplicity
and spontaneity out of which great art springs: theory is still the
canker in its core, and insincerity destroys the advantages of a
merely pretended ignorance.

The despair thus arising from an education which suggests no
pre-eminent mental activity except that of artistic creation is wholly
absent from an education which gives the knowledge of scientific
method. The discovery of scientific method, except in pure
mathematics, is a thing of yesterday; speaking broadly, we may say
that it dates from Galileo. Yet already it has transformed the world,
and its success proceeds with ever-accelerating velocity. In science
men have discovered an activity of the very highest value in which
they are no longer, as in art, dependent for progress upon the
appearance of continually greater genius, for in science the
successors stand upon the shoulders of their predecessors; where one
man of supreme genius has invented a method, a thousand lesser men can
apply it. No transcendent ability is required in order to make useful
discoveries in science; the edifice of science needs its masons,
bricklayers, and common labourers as well as its foremen,
master-builders, and architects.