_THE BANKRUPTCY OF SCIENCE_
In his chapter entitled “Symbolism” Nordau seeks confirmation for his
theory of degeneration in the tendency, more or less perceptible all
the world over, on the part of contemporary artists and poets, to
have recourse to symbols in giving expression to ideas and emotions
impossible to convey in ordinary language. Every one who has had to
do with intricate syntheses of ideas, even of the driest and the most
clearly definable kind, is well aware that language often appears
inadequate to convey such syntheses from one mind to another. How
much more difficult then must it be to convey in exact language a
presentation conjured up from the imagination, an artistic conception,
a poetical mood, a strong emotion, or a chord of emotions, to use an
expression that may in itself serve as an illustration. The use of
symbols, as we have just used the word chord, has not only enormously
widened the capability of language, but has rendered it far more lucid,
laconic, and agreeable.
A modern orator, or writer, could not possibly dispense with symbols,
for without them his speeches or his books would be intensely wordy,
tiresome, and difficult to comprehend. Language is constantly being
enriched by new symbols, either invented and introduced by authors, or
taken from such literary works as have become classic. Often an author
creates a character or an idea which typifies characters and situations
frequently met with, and for which symbols have long been needed. Thus,
for instance, Andersen’s _Ugly Duckling_ became a symbol largely used
as soon as his fable was published, and when Ibsen’s _Doll’s House_ was
played for the first time in London, one newspaper, which, by the way,
took Nordau’s view of Ibsen and declared his characters impossible, in
another article, if we remember aright, on the subject of marriage,
used with great effect Ibsen’s Nora as a symbol.
But such symbols are as old as language, and the new tendency of
_littérateurs_ who call themselves, or who are called, symbolists,
is not to invent and to use symbols that stand for well-known and
perfectly undisputed characters and situations, but such as represent
new ideas, difficult to define, or undefinable, because incomplete, and
concerning emotions. The same authors are also prone to use symbols
for things, beings, and powers, the existence of which has not been
ascertained by the senses, but simply guessed at, or evolved from
consciousness.
Many such symbols were not symbols when first introduced into the
language, but nouns that stood for things, or beings, supposed to be
perfectly real. Thus, for instance, the word “devil,” which in olden
times stood for a satanic majesty, adorned with horns and tail, has
now become a convenient symbol, a thing only too real, but covering
such immense ground, and presenting such innumerable aspects, that a
symbol expressing the whole conception is extremely convenient. Nothing
is commoner than to hear a clergyman use the words “the devil” in his
sermon, though it be part of his creed and of his teachings that God is
so omnipresent throughout the universe that there is not a square inch
for a personal devil to place his foot on.
It is this kind of symbolism which Nordau is bent on crucifying as
degeneration. As we have already said, there is a general tendency
among artists to indulge in it, in order to produce moods and suggest
emotions. Thus, for example, in the picture spoken of in our last
chapter, “Dante’s Dream,” an atmosphere of love is represented by red
birds, and sleep is represented by poppies strewn on the floor. In
Rossetti’s picture Nordau would have taken objection to such symbols,
though he seems reconciled to the symbols used by Raphael and his
school, and would probably not object to those of German allegorical
painters and sculptors.
It is significant that the symbolism which he most vehemently holds up
as a stigma of degeneration, is that of the modern French poets who
have made religious symbolism their speciality. It is not difficult to
see why these have been chosen as the scapegoats for the symbolism of
every art and every country. It is true they boldly call themselves
symbolists. But this would not be enough to elicit from Nordau a
chapter of forty-five pages. Besides calling themselves symbolists,
they have the audacity to be French. Their symbolism is religious, and,
what is worse, is Roman Catholic, and, what is worst of all, it is
antagonistic to science.
Though the now prevailing love for symbols does not always manifest
itself in a religious way, it is natural for it to find its widest
application in speeches and writings on religion. Religion avowedly
deals with things not of this earth, is based not on knowledge and
investigation, but on faith, and appeals not to our intellect, but to
our emotional nature.
The French symbolists have created greater sympathy with their
religious views than might have been expected in our rational times
because, unlike the Catholic clergy of the past, they treat as symbols
what before were considered as representations of actual facts. They
are not orthodox; and if the Church of Rome is anxious, as it seems
to be, to turn this neo-Catholicism into a means of resuming its
influence, it can only do so by enormously modernizing its fundamental
ideas. It will be interesting to see whether the Church of Rome will
accept the symbolists as co-operators, or finally spurn them as
heretics.
What especially rouses the animosity of Nordau against the symbolists
is the fact that the new movement is based on the supposition that
science is bankrupt, or, in other words, that it has failed in all its
promises to humanity; that it has usurped the throne of religion under
false pretences; and that its incapacity to supplant religion has been
demonstrated by the latest scientific discoveries. According to the
idea underlying the French symbolist movement, science has during the
present century aimed at the destruction of religion, and has caused
religion to be neglected, discredited, and scorned.
Such a movement founded on such premises and aiming at such aims must
be of the greatest interest to any man who watches attentively the
development of our race. To study its true cause, its real nature, and
its real aims should be the desire of every earnest investigator; and
if Nordau falls back on obloquy, indelicate insinuations, and blunt
accusations, after the fashion of the militant _literati_ of the past,
the reason of his animosity is easily explained.
Nordau, like many scientists before him and with him, has taken sides
in the absurd fight—the _querelle allemande_—between science and
religion, which has done so much to discredit both. To the unprejudiced
observer, any scientist who joins in the fray is induced to do so
by his inability to distinguish between religion and church, and
consequently to realize that the whole progress of science during the
present century has had the result, amongst many others, of justifying
such an attitude of mind towards God, the original cause, universal
energy, or whatever scientists choose to call it, which religion
implies.
Whoever distinguishes between church and religion will at once
understand that an ascendency of religious views throughout the world
may be perfectly compatible with the decay of sectarian dogmas, and
that therefore many phenomena which appear to indicate the decay of
religious views—such as church-going, for example—may in reality mean a
deeper religious life. If we take a comprehensive view of that progress
in religious views which has been accelerated by science, we shall find
that church-going, the rosary, and the images of the saints indicate
the preliminary stages of a religious evolution which in its later
development requires truer expressions.
So long as we have such a number of sects and churches, many of which
differ essentially, and all of which differ to some extent, it cannot
affect any one’s feelings to be told that church is not religion.
It is this truth that science has accentuated, and the inevitable
consequence has been that the churches, though they at first might
have vehemently opposed certain scientific facts, and yet more certain
rash speculations founded on them, have afterwards quietly striven to
modify their views and their dogmas so that they should not clash with
absolute scientific truths. That many such attempts at reconciliation
between science and churches have been feeble and absurd does not
disprove, but confirms, the existence of the above tendency. Though
perhaps it would be difficult to give a true definition of religion
as distinguished from church, the conception which every thinking man
forms of it is probably clear enough to allow him to realize that some
churches are farther from the ideal than others.
If it be true that the progress of science has been instrumental in
impelling the development of churches in the direction of a future
religion of ideal beauty and ideal truth, and that such a religion must
necessarily be in complete harmony with scientific facts, then the
animosity of science and religion is to a sound mind incomprehensible.
Yet Nordau unhesitatingly takes for granted that religion and science
are naturally antagonistic. He takes very seriously the assumption of
the French neo-Catholics that henceforth science will have to make
room for religion. Had he any sense of humour, he would not have thus
betrayed how _jalousie de métier_ animates him to no small extent. He
mixes up science and the scientists in a most amusing manner when he
compares the neglected scientist with the idolized saint, and asks,
“What saintly legend is as beautiful as the life of an enquirer who
spends his existence bending over the microscope?” Does our alienist
aspire to go down to posterity with a halo around his head? He regrets
the good old time when the daily Press of that date said, “We live in
a scientific age,” when “the news of the day reported the travels and
the marriages of scientists, the _feuilleton_ novels contained witty
allusions to Darwin, etc.”
Nordau completely denies that there is any foundation for the assertion
of the French symbolists that science has become bankrupt—that it has
not fulfilled its promises to humanity. In order to refute it, he gives
us the long list of scientific achievements to which scientists who
militate against religion have accustomed us, beginning with spectrum
analysis and finishing up with instantaneous photography. He demands
for science the respect and trust of humanity, not only on the ground
of what science has accomplished, but also on the ground of what it
will accomplish.
His faith in his mission deserves sincere admiration, and proves him to
be one of those earnest enthusiasts who alone can advance humanity. But
he does not see that his prophecies regarding future achievements are
not science, but faith and religion—based, it is true, on reasonable
grounds, but still faith and religion.
Nor does he see that his proud asseveration of the achievements of
science, and his prophecy with regard to its future, do not constitute
a refutation to the cry of the symbolists that science is bankrupt.
The promises which the symbolists refer to as being dishonoured by
science, are not of the kind that could possibly be redeemed by the
achievements referred to in Nordau’s splendid list. They allude to
promises not really made by science, but by rash and prejudiced
scientists. These have over and over again proclaimed that religion had
been supplanted by science, and that science could, or else soon would,
explain all those mysteries which religion claimed to explain or to
symbolize, such as first causes, final aims, existence or non-existence
before birth and after death, the origin of evil, the essence of
morality, and so on. Science, according to them, was not only to
bring about perfect serenity in man’s mind regarding himself and the
universe, but to satisfy the mysterious longings and the uncontrollable
emotions, either hereditary, or part of man’s nature, which hitherto
religion alone had satisfied. Science was also to supply rational
motives for purity, morality, self-sacrifice, and all the virtues
and exertions which are indispensable to the elevation of our race.
Finally, science was to transform us into an ideal race, living in an
ideal manner, thus substituting a terrestrial heaven for humanity, for
the spiritual heaven which religion promised for the individual.
Nordau cannot blame the scientists who made these promises; for the
whole of his book shows that he is in entire sympathy with them.
There was a time when the educated world believed in the arrogant
promises of the scientists; when it confidently expected that
mysteries, so far unexplained, would be cleared up within a reasonable
time, and that systems and speculation, which were to take the place
of religion, would gradually be so amended as to become capable of
fulfilling so great an object.
But the rapid scientific discoveries which followed one upon each
other, far from tending to fulfil the promises of the scientists, had
the effect of persuading the world that science was not going to keep
any of these promises. For each mystery it unravelled revealed a series
of new mysteries behind it, and the explanatory task of science grew
with its own progress. In fact, while the explanations increased by
simple arithmetical progression, the mysteries rose up in geometrical
progression.
At the same time better schools, public lectures, and innumerable
periodicals initiated the masses into the secrets of the scientific
freemasonry, and people began to perceive that what they, in their
awe of science, believed to be perfect knowledge of the very essence
of the world-phenomenon was only a series of acute observations, an
intelligent classification, backed by arbitrary speculations and the
superstitious faith in the omnipotence of science, culminating simply
in a barren religion of humanity.
As to eternity and infinity of space, all that science could do
was to tell the masses not to trouble their heads about them; as
to causality, they were asked to regard it simply as “a form of
thought which had nothing to do with the phenomena.” As to morality,
the religion of humanity seemed extremely untrustworthy: for the
removal of all personal responsibility, and the certainty of complete
annihilation after death, seemed to give the strong-minded and clever
people the strongest possible inducement to make their fellow-beings
tools for their own happiness. The promised earthly paradise was not
only thousands of years ahead in time, but was to be constituted on
principles which even a superficial knowledge of economy and sociology
was bound to expose as an Inferno.
It was natural then that a great number of people, unable to climb to
the height of abstract and unsatisfactory reasoning of the kind that
the scientists had attained to, and whose emotional nature utterly
rebelled against a progression which was intended constantly to violate
their best instincts, should spurn science, which offered them no other
compensation than freedom from personal responsibility.
It was not only the hollow arrogance of the scientists and the failure
of science to fulfil the promises of its superstitious votaries which
had created disgust with scientific atheism: the practical results of
the anti-religious tendencies became alarmingly apparent; experience
began to prove that the discarding of all personal responsibility did
not produce the _ultra_ man—_der Uebermensch_—of which the scientists
claimed to be the prototypes.
Many of them had been in the habit of speaking scornfully of those
selfish natures who live irreproachable lives, and who devote
themselves to the promotion of the good of their fellow-men under the
impression that in a future state they would reap their reward. The
atheist-scientist represented himself as a man of different metal: he
was fully as moral as the religionist; he spent his life in serving
humanity, well knowing that his self-control and self-sacrifice
would bring him no reward; he did his duty, not induced by any mean,
religious consideration, but because he was a perfect man.
The lesser mortals, those from whose ranks the symbolists are
recruited, began to entertain doubts of the infallibility of these
first-fruits of the religion of humanity. The very arrogance of these
perfect men told against them. If they disbelieved in the rewards of a
future life, they were not averse to the rewards in this, and eagerly
accepted the money and the distinction their works brought them. There
was especially this about them: they unhesitatingly attacked that
which the masses could alone rely on for moral guidance, equanimity,
consolation, and encouragement—religion—while the religion of humanity
was thousands of years in the future, and thus left the people a prey
to mental bewilderment, doubt, and unrestrained passions. The scientist
stood accused of acting like a man depriving a cripple of his only
crutch, against the promise of supplying his remote descendants with
better ones.
But atheism had a far worse effect on ordinary mortals, who had not
to sustain a reputation as apostles of the new scientific creed.
Convinced that no personal responsibility attached to them, and caring
little for what would happen to the next generation, or still less to
generations thousands of years hence, they tried to persuade themselves
that conscience was an inherited weakness, developed by evolution, or
a product of wrong religious teaching. Wishing to rise above such a
weakness, they did their best to silence conscience, and to live for
self-gratification. In this manner selfishness, if not Egomania, was
strongly developed.
Capitalists and politicians strove to acquire wealth and power,
regardless of other people’s rights, of their own conscience, and of
their sense of honour, so long as their dishonour was known only to
themselves. Society became frivolous, and exhibited the same stigmata
of degeneration noticed before in decaying commonwealths. Art became
lascivious and corrupting; literature became realistic and offensive.
In fact, a host of clever men who ought to have been benefactors of
their race cared not to what extent they ruined and demoralized their
fellow-beings so long as they safeguarded their own health, their own
future, and their social position.
The working classes being told by men, far superior to them in
intellect and education, that their only chance was in their lives here
on earth, and that death was annihilation, began to sympathize with
violent Nihilists and Anarchists, and were less averse to risk their
lives, if it were only to avenge themselves on those who deprived them
of their terrestrial happiness.
But it was not only in the effect on their fellow-beings that the
neo-Catholics, the symbolists, and their sympathizers all over
the world beheld the results of scientific atheism. Many of these
themselves became “frightful examples” of these results. Nordau commits
a great mistake in studying the French symbolists as authors and poets.
It is as children of their times that they should be studied. He looks
upon them as causes of the symbolist movement, whereas we should
have regarded them as the indicators of a remarkable stage in the
development of our race.
It was inevitable that the theories of the scientists should have been
accepted more widely in France than in any other civilized country. In
the English-speaking countries the Churches and sects had not assumed
the same uncompromising attitude with regard to the mediæval doctrines
as the Church of Rome. They had gradually receded from one contested
point after another and many of their old forms and texts were given
a more liberal interpretation. Urged on by the example of the Broad
Church, the Congregationalists, and especially by the Unitarians, the
clergy and the ministers ceased their opposition to any established
scientific facts, though they rejected scientific speculations. The
influence of the scientists in the English-speaking countries tended
therefore to modernize religion, instead of bringing it into contempt.
In Germany, where the people are slow to oppose any authority, and
where they are extremely shy of their real religious opinions,
scientific atheism simply encouraged the free-thinkers existing there
of old and induced a mass of young men to masquerade as free-thinkers
who in reality held no opinions at all, and who were destined to become
devout in their old age.
In Italy and Spain the teachings of the scientists only somewhat
strengthened the hands of the Liberals, but produced no effect on the
Ultramontanes. In Russia, where the nobility and the middle classes
had for a long time been free-thinkers, or perhaps non-thinkers, in
regard to religious questions, the religion of humanity affected only
that portion of the people which was already under the influence of
Nihilism, and tended to render them more reckless.
In France however, and perhaps in such countries as are
directly influenced by French views—for instance, Belgium and
Switzerland,—circumstances were different. The atheism which broke out
with the first French Revolution had begun to subside, the nobility
and the upper classes were the allies of Rome partly by conviction
and partly from policy. In the country districts the _curés_ had
resumed their influence over the peasantry, but the labouring class
in the towns was divided into two camps, the free-thinkers and the
Ultramontanes; and the difference between them was emphasized by the
circumstance that the Ultramontanes were generally conservative in
siding with the powers that be, while the free-thinkers were more or
less extreme Republicans, Socialists, or Communists.
Such was the situation in France when the influence of the scientists
on religious opinion began to make itself felt there. The materialist
views were eagerly taken up by the Bohemians of Paris and by the
extreme wing of the Republican Press. The upper classes read, or
skimmed, the English scientists, and up to the beginning of the
Franco-German war the German philosophers were much in vogue amongst
the upper classes and in literary circles. In this fashion the Church
of Rome had to face an attack differing widely from the French
Revolution. Then the corruption, and the siding of the Church with
those who were regarded as the enemies of the country, exposed it
to open violence prompted by strongly roused passions. During the
latter days of the Second Empire it was assailed in its dogmas with
arms borrowed from scientific research and speculation. The latter
attack was by far the more dangerous. The discontent with the Imperial
Government did much to draw the urban working classes into the ranks
of the free-thinkers, where the theories of the scientists confirmed
them in their new atheism. Parisian society had become atheistic, and
the whole male population of the middle class prided themselves on
their freedom from all religious prejudices. What remained of religion
in France was represented by the old nobility, who had a political
interest in being religious; by the peasants, who were supposed to be
too stupid to grasp the new scientific truths; by old men, who had not
the courage to face the grave without the consolation of religion; and
by the women, to whom, it was confessed even by the most debauched
_roués_, religion gave an extra charm.
When the Third Republic was launched it had a strong atheistic
character, and the working classes in all the cities, the sincere
free-thinkers, patriots, and philanthropists, hoped that under
a Republican form of government the religion of humanity of the
scientists would at last have a fair trial. But they were destined to
bitter disappointment. The new Republic turned out to be _bourgeois_
in the worst sense of the word. Politics passed into a profession.
Politicians and administrators became corrupt. Scandals multiplied.
Even the Press was unable to show clean hands. Wealth became
all-powerful, and the plutocrats acquired an enormous influence which
they did not hesitate to use to their own advantage. Speculators
and adventurers pulled the strings of the home, and especially of
the colonial, policy, and in order to further private interests the
indebtedness of the State was carried to such a point as to threaten
the most gigantic financial catastrophe the world has ever witnessed.
In the meantime the working classes and even the agriculturists
naturally suffered from the result of a system of government which
disregarded their interests. The proletariat of the cities grew, labour
troubles became frequent, wages fell, and poverty rapidly increased.
While this growing penury invaded the homes of the working and
lower middle class of a nation which has only partially realized
the happiness and healthy influence flowing from decent and moral
homes, scientific atheism took possession of the minds of the people,
especially of the men. It urged them to make the most of their lives,
and enticed them into a whirlpool of dissipation.
Scientific atheism was bound to produce a vast increase in immorality
in a country like France, where the Church of Rome, in order to enhance
its influence over the people, favours unhappy relations between the
sexes. The clergy do all they can to estrange the sexes prior to
marriage, and thus prevent pure love and love-marriages, while they
encourage _mariages de convenance_. They are animated no doubt by the
best intentions, but, living themselves in enforced celibacy, have no
idea to what an extent they thus undermine the morality of the people.
As love counts for little in the tying of the matrimonial knot, and the
_dot_ counts for much, French unendowed girls stand a poor chance of
ever getting married. This exclusion of an enormous number of the best
women from the marriage market explains, to a large extent, the many
irregular households to be met with in France. The fact that lovable
and high-souled women accept the position of mistresses has largely
tended to multiply mock marriages. The refusal on the part of the
Church of Rome to permit divorce, and the lovelessness of the regular
alliances, tend in the same direction. The sum total of all this is
that a majority of Frenchwomen have to choose between an unhappy
married life without love, and an immoral one with it. Those who are
forced into the former in a great many cases seek consolation in an
illicit _liaison_; those who drift into the latter become debauched.
While thus the young, respectable, and pure-minded girls are relegated
to schools and nunneries and excluded from all association with
young men, among these licentious pleasure often takes the place of
romantic love. Hence physically and morally unhealthy lives, absence of
happiness, craving for excitement, morbid passions, pessimism, contempt
for life, depraved tastes, hysteria.
Scientific atheism had however only aggravated a state of things
created by sacerdotal influence on social habits. But it was only
natural that a nation, so biassed in social questions as France, should
ascribe the decay of morality and of so many other virtues to the
weakening of that influence which for centuries had proclaimed itself,
and had been considered by the masses as the only check upon wickedness
among great and small alike.
Hosts of young men who entered life with noble aspirations to fight for
high ideals, soon perceived, when left to shift for themselves, that
the society around them irresistibly opposed the realization of their
hopes. They found it difficult, almost impossible, to reconcile success
with self-esteem, love with morality, and their poetical aspirations
with their manner of living. Many, in despair of happiness and success,
or in order to forget their crumbled illusions, threw themselves into
a feverish quest for excitement, in which health of body and mind were
jeopardized.
Awakening to the full consciousness of the depth of their fall, they
could not fail to see that the social system under which they lived
was largely responsible for their miseries. In looking back over
their wasted lives they saw nought but shattered hopes. What they had
forfeited were a happy and vigorous youth, transports of romance, the
love of a pure-minded woman, a strong and active manhood, a chivalrous
fight for the good, the pure, the true, and the beautiful, the respect
of their fellow-men, an ideal home.
The social conditions which they held responsible for their miserable
career, and even for the regret they experienced, could not be laid at
the door of an Emperor or a dynasty: for their country was governed by
universal suffrage. Finding government, legislation, institutions, and
social conditions vitiated, they had to blame Society. They found that
Society was atheistic, and was deprived of the only check and guide
that came within their ken—religion. They were filled with an intense
longing to destroy the atheism which science had created, and to return
to a belief which would re-endow Society with moral order, health,
romance, love, purity, and beautiful emotions.
Science was the enemy, as under the Empire the priest was the enemy.
To discredit it was the first essential step. When therefore the
actual power of science, its actual possibilities, became popularized,
and each successive scientific discovery rendered the prophecies of
the superstitious scientists more and more preposterous, the French
symbolists took up the cry that science was bankrupt.