WIDENER
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s 66.50
with the riguros
of the authon
Coeli e narrant.
SCIENCE AND WISDOM
BY
EDWARD A. BIRGE
The University of Wisconsin
An address delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa
Society, Alpha of Louisiana, Tulane
University, May 16, 1911
Published by the Society
New Orleans
1911
By


he lavished on the work his own treasure, the gifts of the faith-
ful and the collected wealth of his empire, so that the temple
might fitly bear the name of that wisdom which is the “un-
searchable riches” of God. With even greater fitness, in de-
signing a temple of “the artificer of things that are,” he sought
a building whose construction should surpass in boldness of
design and execution all that the world had hitherto known;
and when his workmen had hung in air the dome of St. Sophia,
the people believed that only the divine wisdom itself could
have wrought the miracle. That the church might not lack
for beauty, Justinian robbed the temples of his empire of their
treasures of stone that he might select the choicest as columns
to adorn his shrine for the Divine Wisdom.
Thus the story of the church of Saint Sophia offers a fit par-
allel to that of the invisible temple of wisdom in which all gen.
erations of men have worshipped. This temple, too, always
stands on the site of earlier structures, each expressing the
devotion of the builders to their own vision of the divine
wisdom, to their ever renewed sense of the need of that wis-
dom as the guide of life. It stands eternal as it enshrines
eternal wisdom; but it is reshaped in part from time to time,
or wholly built anew in response to fresh revelations. Its ser-
vice is the answer of the soul of man to the call of wisdom,
varied in form as each generation expresses in it the praise of
that wisdom which they see and their prayer for the unseen
wisdom of their hopes.
Some would press the comparison further. They feel that
in these later days of ours it has happened to the invisible
temple of St. Sophia as to its great prototype in Constantinople.
It has fallen into the hands of the infidel; the crescent has
replaced the cross on its dome; and in its service the con-
fession of God and Mohammed as his prophet supplants the
praise of Father and Son. The fane is not deserted, it is not
desecrated, still less, destroyed. It is not dedicated to an un-
known God; it still bears the name of the Divine Wisdom ;
but it has been consecrated to the worship of an alien faith,
whose servants pray in a barbarous tongue, and offer their
devotions, not before the altar of wisdom, but quite athwart
the temple, toward a distant sanctuary in an alien land.


ered a wide range. It was always two-sided; it looked both
toward a wisdom expressed in the order of the world about us,
and toward that wisdom adopted into the life of man and
shaping it aright. This outer wisdom, at the lowest, might be
that embodied in the conventions of society and religion, and
its inner expression was the law of mere prudence. From this
commonplace term it rose to a vision of a wisdom manifesting
itself in the shaping of a universe that comes freely
and joyfully from the divine hand, unspoiled by man's
willfulness. Thus did the “heavens declare the glory
of God." The sure guidance of Arcturus and his
sons, the parting of the light, the begetting of the
rain and the dew, the care of all the beasts of the field
and the fowl of the air, the ordering of that great and wide
sea, with its creeping things innumerable both small and
great-in these was found the wisdom of the Lord, and these
were the works in which that wisdom rejoices. Wisdom might
indeed rejoice in God's “habitable earth ;” but at the best
human life, in comparison with nature, was obscure, doubtful,
problematical. It offered a difficulty to be solved by the aid of
nature. Faith in the divine wisdom, so clearly displayed in
the control of the heavens and the earth, was the only power
that could lift, even in part, the darkness of human trouble.
The Hebrew sought for his own life the wisdom found in
nature. He would try to bring into that whose ordering was
committed to him something of the wisdom so necessarily and
graciously expressed in the world of God's ordering. For a
time the faith sufficed that the wisdom of the world was present
for man also, and that his increasing insight would disclose it
more clearly and that a larger faith would enable him to enter
into it.
But as generations passed, and men saw more clearly the
complexity of human affairs, the burden of the trouble and
confusion of man's life became so heavy that this naive faith
could no longer support it. And when at last Christianity
came to lighten the load, the church did not attempt a restora-
tion of the older faith, nor a new synthesis of man and
nature. On the contrary, it removed the center of man's inter-
ests and faith out of this world into one deemed more spiritual.
It saved for a higher life what it considered the essence of man
TO
lt.


ture more spontaneously and freely than ever had happened be-
fore or perhaps since, but their minds were not touched by her.
The conception of nature as a coherent system of things had as
yet no existence, in the sense in which it exists today. On the
other hand, men were too sophisticated for that naive interpre-
tation of nature as the personal expression of God with which
the past had been fully satisfied. So when Asia and America
were discovered, men were in general contented with the ma-
terial gains from the new worlds and looked to them for
wealth, not for ideas. When their souls sought for guidance
and inspiration, they turned not to nature but to the world of
classical letters and art, as much a discovery of their age as was
America.
This world yielded them an inestimable treasure, not in
mines of crude ore, but the pure metal already extracted by
cunning artificers, fashioned by artists, shaped into statue and
vase, wrought into jewels for men's adornment, and minted
into coin for their spending. This treasure was no mere relic
of a mighty past, but the product of a coherent world of
letters which was ready to be appropriated rather than waiting
to be explored. All men entered into it easily and readily-
far more readily than they could have entered into the world of
nature. Here their spirits felt themselves at home; in a larger
home, but not the less homelike. This was where they had
always belonged, had they only known it. This was the
“statelier mansion” which their own souls would have builded
had they known how. It was the expression of their own high-
er lives that classical letters revealed; and those lives, hitherto
cramped and stunted for want of fit expression, rapidly ex-
panded and developed and embodied the spirit thus brought to
them.
Thus there arose for the modern world a new wisdom.
Man rediscovered himself; or rather, in a very real sense of
the word, discovered himself. Above all conceptions of in-
dividual greatness, above limitations of age, of race, of tongue,
there arose for the first time in history the idea of mankind; a
connected kinship, receiving and recording “in sundry ways
and divers manners’’ the message of the manifold wisdom of hu-
man life. In the long record of man's experience and achieve-
ment, now first disclosed as a whole, could be seen an order and


ing terms of daily life and the bondage of routine into some
friendly share in the liberty of those who have worthily
represented humanity at its best. And culture makes its
possessors prophets as well, ready and able to present, alike
in act and speech, the message of that life which is their
most precious possession, which has been imparted to them by
others and which they in turn long to share with all souls
in which it may be kindled.
In this wisdom and culture academic life dwelt content
during four centuries. Scholarship changed its form indeed;
social and political conditions outside of academic walls altered
repeatedly, and university life changed with them. National
literatures rose and fell. But the inner spirit of scholarship,
the hidden wisdom which she revealed to her students, the inner
culture which she bred in her children—these in their essence
remained unaltered for a time so long that they seemed to have
become unalterable.
But a change was to come, and if for want of a better date
we are to place the critical period of humanism at the fall of
Constantinople, in 1453, we shall place the birth of science, in
the same sense, at the advent of Darwinism, almost exactly four
centuries later.
Once more wisdom was to receive an enlargement so great
that the result deserves to be called new. It need hardly be said
that in this change, as in those of earlier times, the older wisdom
was not lost. The world has never been forced to abandon
an older wisdom in order to gain a newer-however eagerly
enthusiasts have urged it to do so. It has always refused to
choose between the unchanged wisdom of an earlier order and
that of a brand new discovery. The new wisdom as it de-
velops—because it is wisdom—has taken up and carried on the
life of the old. It has justified the name of new because it
has brought formative powers which have shaped wisdom
afresh for a larger life.
So with the advent of Darwinism science, after centuries
of unconsidered development, has reached coherent form and
power, has become dominant in determining the trend of men's
lives and the temper of the new wisdom. In so doing it has
added its powers to those of the older wisdom rather than
displaced them.
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new place; she claimed to be not merely the guide of practical
affairs, but also the source of new wisdom. This wisdom
lay in the recognition of the harmony between the order of
nature and that of human life; a harmony expressed not in the
old simple terms of the Hebrew but in other and far more
difficult ones. Such a wisdom was not only new to the world;
it was also unwelcome. The world of scholarship—that of hu-
manism—had found its wisdom in the achievements of the hu-
man spirit; that of religion in the revelation of divine help
for human failure. Long centuries of thought and feeling
had saturated both with the belief that man was outside of
nature and independent of her, at least in spirit. So when the
new learning came, demanding that human life be inter-
preted in the terms of nature, there were many reasons why
its wisdom should fail of acceptance, both in the world of
scholarship and outside of it.
The subject matter of science is that which the humanist
had always thought inferior, if not unworthy of his notice.
Man and his doings and sayings had for centuries been the
center of his educational scheme. The call to turn from man
and the “best that he has said and thought” to “things” and
their formless message was in itself a demand to abandon
the higher for the lower. He regarded the new learning as
cheap and transitory. It dealt obviously with daily life, with
practical affairs. How could it yield spiritual verities of like
importance to those of humanism, or, indeed, spiritual veri-
ties of any kind ?
This feeling of aversion was only intensified by the very
different qualities of mind to which humanism and science re-
spectively appeal and which they develop. The older culture
rests on the recognition of the miracle of revealed person-
ality in letters, on the appreciation of the common element in
remote expressions of human life. These are of value because
they are expressions of the human spirit, and he who appre-
ciates them aright does so because he carries with him his
own personality to be strengthened and fed from these sources
and remoulded by their influences.
Not so with science. She demands that her disciple shall
not merely abandon old opinion and inveterate prejudice; she
calls upon him in the very full sense of the word to "deny
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himself” if he is to receive her teaching of all kinds of
misinterpretation and misrepresentation the scientist most
dreads that which results from his unconsciously importing
himself into the story which nature transmits through him.
Nor is this all. Even more acute is the difference that
arises as the culture of the humanist encounters the temper
which science inspires. The student of science finds that the
knowledge which he first gains at once tempts him into ad-
jacent fields; these in turn carry him to the edge of things
where the fascination of the unknown seizes upon him and
forces him on and out. “For to admire and for to see”-this
is the temper of science, with its inevitable accompaniment of
restlessness and its equally inevitable conclusion ; “I couldn't
'elp it if I tried." But restlessness of spirit and culture in
the academic sense of the word are mutually exclusive. So long
as science still tempts the explorer with new mountains to
cross, new oceans to voyage, new continents of knowledge to
map and to reduce under the orderly sway of the human
mind, so long will the old academic culture be foreign to her
spirit. That culture comes out of brooding over great things,
familiar and well known; not out of seeking for something new.
It is a temper essentially stationary, finished. Science yields
a strength which is restless, progressive, uneasy, inquiring.
The one comes out of a mind that “sees life steadily” and
seeks to induce a similar state of mind; the other arises from
the eternal movement of nature out of the old into the new,
and inspires a kindred movement of mind. In reaching for-
ward toward the things that are before, it forgets those that
are behind; but it is with the latter that culture finds its com-
panionship. Thus the one is not subject to the laws of the
other; neither, indeed, can it be.
And all of these temperamental difficulties are accentu-
ated and redoubled by the different relation which humanism
and science hold to language. Language and humanism are
born out of the same stock and are in full sympathy with each
other. Language was devised to express the results of man's
thought and feeling, not the facts and laws of nature. It is
fitted for the one task and is ill adapted for the other. Critics
are wont to feel that there must have been a streak of in-
capacity and obtuseness in Darwin's mind, which made writing
nd is ill ast haved, whi
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that movement of the world of which we are a part. It required
long training and the inspiration from many great souls to
teach man that he is an exception to nature, raised above her
control instead of being in bondage to her whims. In the vision
of that faith, once learned, men walked for generations and
placed in it their hopes of the future. Now they are learning
an even harder lesson. They are learning to keep
all that the older faith showed them in personality and
yet to see that man--with all these powers—is a part of the
world, a part of his workmanship “through whom are all
things, and we through him.”
Thus science is developing a wisdom of its own, and that
not merely the wisdom of daily practice, but also one which
reaches into all parts of the higher life of man and one that may
well form the spiritual center of higher education. In like
manner, a culture of science develops as the academic side of
that wisdom. The evolution of culture must wait on that of
wisdom and necessarily lags behind. At present only its begin.
nings can be seen. Those who possess the new wisdom find
their minds in some sense sharing the creative movement of
nature, whether seen in man or the world. The corresponding
culture will belong to those who can catch from other men
an appreciation of that movement rather than gain a first-hand
knowledge of it; who can derive just proportion for their
actions, quiet and poise for their lives from the presence of an
ordered movement of things, whose effects they feel in them-
selves rather than perceive in the world about them. This will
he, like all culture, a personal possession derived from the per-
sonalities of others rather than a direct message from the larger
world of wisdom itself.
I need not say that science teaching has not as yet seriously
tried to impart this culture. It is still busied with the problems
of the working out of wisdom with the wisdom of daily life
in applied science; with that of research in pure science. Its
teaching is still dominated by the sense of the unknown rather
than by the sense of possession of the known. Its first aim is
to kindle the fire of the explorer in all students who come under
its influence. But the temper of scientific culture can be seen
in those who best embody the spirit of science. This temper is
not based on the best that men have thought and said, but on
the vision of creative wisdom, now busy with her ordered work.
Its interest is therefore in deeds, not in words, and it is inev-
itably less careful of the phrase than is the older culture; but it
is more careful of the sympathy between expression and the
permanent verities. It may lack the serenity of books but it
has the deeper serenity that comes out of communion with
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nature. It has that unhastening strength and quiet proportion
of action whic hbelong naturally to those who are in touch
with the great, slow-moving, formative powers of the world.
This spirit, now bred of science, incarnate in her chosen repre-
sentatives, is that which will become a widespread possession
of men as the wisdom of science becomes wrought into human
life. It is already the culture of the children of science and
will become that of her pupils.
This wisdom and culture alike are but partially revealed
and imperfectly seen. But amid all uncertainties, beyond all
doubts, we are confident at least of one thing; that science is
l'evealing a new wisdom. Daily lessons have taught us so much
as this. If we are looking for the wisdom that guides the world,
science discloses that which “reacheth from one end of the
world to the other with full strength and ordereth all things.”
If we would find the wisdom that is the “artificer of things that
are,” of whom shall we inquire but of science? If our thoughts
rise higher and would ascend to the source of the eternal pro-
cession of the universe, who but science points the way to the
power which “remaining in itself, reneweth all things.”
Small indeed is that part of the ways of this wisdom which
we know, but already we see so much that we may wait their
full disclosure with the quiet confidence of those who are sure
that the wisdom is still regnant which has shaped events hith-
erto, and with the unfeigned joy of those who know that to
their generation is being revealed the administration of a mys-
tery that from ages eternal has been hidden in the creator of
all things.
This message of the new wisdom is that which the heavens
are telling. Our ear catches as yet only fragments of their
declaration and we understand but few of its words. But so
much we hear and know—that out of nature must come-is
coming—the new wisdom; and that the lesson set for our gen-
eration, as for the last one and those in the immediate future,
is to hear this message; to learn this wisdom, and to render the
obedience of faith.
Science has recreated the world for man's dwelling; she
has opened his eyes to new heavens; she has disclosed a new
earth. She has taught him that he is himself the offspring of
the same wisdom in which both had their birth. And now,
with infinite pains, slowly, partially, imperfectly as yet, but
with the assured movement of all natural processes, she is
bringing him into harmony with that wisdom and making him
in soul, as well as in knowledge, an integral part of the creation.
When that readjustment of spirit is completed, the new man,
fulfilled of the new wisdom, will hear the voice of the heavens
declare the greater glory of God.
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