“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.