I AM persuaded, said Claude Bernard, that the day will come, when
the man of science, the philosopher and the poet will all
understand each other. Whatever we may think of this prophecy, we
most of us feel that the one-sided absolutism of the past, whether
religious or scientific, is no longer possible. The inevitable
vehemence of the reaction against bigotry and superstition has, in
a measure, spent itself, and the best minds of the present,
influenced by the spirit of Socrates' claim to wisdom, are
cautiously and tentatively feeling their way to a nicer adjustment
of the scales of thought. That these should ever be poised in
perfect equilibrium is no doubt impossible in this world of
clashing categories; but the undoubted truths to be found in
extremes are beginning to be recognised as partial and relative, as
only fragmentary elements in the ultimate synthesis. From the
conviction that the whole truth is not to be found in any partial
utterance of humanity, the passage is easy to the opinion, that for
a really philosophical appreciation of our nature, an impartial
examination of all the sides, of man is necessary. The philosopher,
the scientist, the artist, the saint must all contribute.
Contemporary non-religious thought, like its predecessor of an
earlier day, is becoming persuaded that some good. thing may come
even out of Nazareth. The thin, dry optimism of sectarian
Christianity and of official materialism we see now to be not so
much erroneous as unthinkable. We have done, it may be hoped for
ever, with If the proofs which proved, and the explanations which
explained nothing. A hundred years ago truth seemed a simpler
matter to our fathers. They stood on the threshold of the modem
industrial world, to them a coming golden age tipped with the
brightness of rising science. Exact knowledge and universal
education were to make men happy and wise and good. Kings and
priests were gone, or, at least, the back of their despotism was
broken; these incubi, the causes of all his misery, removed, man, a
well-meaning creature, and more than capable of taking care of
himself, would begin at last to live, and, in the normal exercise
of his natural functions, hitherto artificially strapped down by
theological and political tyrants, would find true satisfaction
and, consequently, the perfect happiness of his being. But they
counted without machine-looms or the law of heredity, of which they
derided the theological expression in the doctrine of original sin.
The true value of the Revolution did not lie in the supposed
sagacity of its political wisdom, and even less in its social
results, which we have with us today, but in the indomitable hope
and faith which animated some of its greatest illustrations. It is
impossible to read the best French moralists of the Revolutionary
period-say, Vauvenargues and Condorcet-without being struck by the
deep spiritual earnestness which underlay much in them that was
flimsy as argument, mistaken as fact, frothy and unreal as
sentiment.
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