GIFT OF (^A^^^Aycte.^^ Louis Clark Vanuxem Foundation LECTURES DELIVERED IN CONNECTION WITH THE DEDICATION OF THE GRADUATE COLLEGE OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY IN OCTOBER, 1913 EMILE BOUTROUX ALOIS RIEHL A. D. GODLEY ARTHUR SHIPLEY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PRINCETON LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1914 . Published October, 1914 # 7^ I SCIENCE AND CULTURE Emile Boutroux Honorary Professor in the Faculty of the University of Paris Director of the Fondation Thiers Member of the French Academy II THE VOCATION OF PHILOSOPHY AT THE PRESENT DAY Alois Riehl Professor of Philosophy and recently Rector in the University of Berlin III THE PRESENT POSITION OF CLASSICAL STUDIES IN ENGLAND A. D. GoDLEY, M.A. Fellow of Magdalen College Public Orator in the University of Oxford IV THE REVIVAL OF SCIENCE IN THE SEVEN- TEENTH CENTURY Arthur Shipley, F.R.S., D.Sc. Professor of Zoology Master of Christ's College, University of Cambridge 294^03 NOTE The four lectures here printed were deliv- ered in the East Room of McCosh Hall on the two days preceding the dedication of the Grad- uate College of Princeton University on Octo- ber 22, 1914. The lectures of Professor Boutroux and Professor Riehl have been trans- lated for this volume. SCIENCE AND CULTURE SCIENCE AND CULTURE By Emile Boutroux Science and Culture — few words are heard more often in our day and few words cause so many controversies and discussions on all sides. \ Does culture — to use the word in its exact sense — arise naturally from the progress of \ science or has culture her own conditions, her own laws, her progress or her decadence in a . domain distinct from the true domain of science? More than this, might it not be maintained that science in the state she has reached during the ages, far from being favorable to culture , in the classic sense of the word, rather tends, by the growing importance she gives to spe- 3 4 EMIl.EBOUTROUX cialization, to substitute for culture a mechani- cal training of an entirely different sort? These questions suggest themselves today to all reflecting minds and it seems particularly opportune to discuss them here, in this college, which has set before itself the ideal of being at the same time a laboratory of pure science and a school of high culture. We must not be surprised to find ourselves confronted by this problem: it does not date from yesterday. Humanity in the course of its history has already, at many recurring in- tervals, passed through crises analogous to the situation we have before our eyes. Long ago among the ancient Greeks, the appearance of the Sophists meant a conflict of this kind. Some bold investigators sketched the foundations for a science of nature to be constructed not as before, say in the cosmogonic doctrines, from the standpoint of man, his be- liefs and his desires, but from the standpoint of nature itself. They were called physio- ^ logues. They tried to find out whether the substance of things is one or multiple, changing or immutable, formed of visible elements or of SCIENCE AND CULTURE 5 numbers, or of atoms, or of particles infinitely tiny but qualitatively different; whether the action of an entirely mechanical necessity is enough to account for the order and the mar- vellous diversity of the phenomena of the uni- verse. In magnificent systems, they displayed, as in a vast panorama, the history of the world, its orgin, its course, its destiny. But what became of man in the midst of this universe? His virtues, his thoughts, his arts, his institutions, his life — had they any reality, any value? Socrates, crowning by a positive doctrine the critical work of the Sophists, was not content with protesting against a science which ignored or absorbed man; he put in the foreground human duties and the knowledge and culture of self. Then Plato and Aristotle found a way to make human virtue itself the point of departure for all wisdom, and the crisis precipitated by the Sophists was resolved into a harmony arising from the subordination of the science of nature to ideal culture. A second crisis arose, at the end of the Middle Ages, when scholasticism seemed to have established to all eternity a science ade- :£mile boutroux quate for all things human and divine, a science before which man, as man, could not pretend to take anj^ attitude but one of obed- ient submission — complete and absolute. Once more man protested. Every one knows with what eloquence that protest is ex- pressed by Goethe's Faust: Was man nicht weiss, das eben brauchte man, Und was man weiss, kann man nicht brauchen. Weh! Stech' ich in dem Kerker noch? Fliehl Auf! Hinaus in 's weite land! The works of a Rabelais or a Montaigne are nothing else but a continual revindication of the rights of culture and of life, in the pres- ence of the tyranny of abstract science, y "Knowledge without conscience," said Rabe- lais, "is simply the ruin of the soul." And Montaigne: "Science without judgment is the destruction of the mind." Finally, with Descartes, the principle of cul- ture triumphed, and triumphed, moreover, in such a way as, at the same time, to maintain SCIENCE vVND CULTURE 7 and strengthen the rights of science itself. For Descartes insisted that human culture consis- ted essentially in the culture of the reason, which finds its satisfaction in science, as well as in those moral truths which assure the dig- nity of man and direct him towards God. The treatise entitled Regulae ad Directionem In- genii opens with this sentence; ''Studiorum finis esse debet ingenii directio ad solida et vera de iis omnibus quae occurrunt proferenda judicia. (The aim of study should be the mind's culture, enabling us to utter well founded and true judgments about anything that may occur.) The Scholastic logic has been the art of reasoning; the Cartesian logic was the art of thinking. Very soon, nevertheless, scientism and in- tellectualism dominated men's minds so com- pletely that they threatened to destroy feeling and spontaneity. That was the time which is called the Epoch of the Enlightenment, whose masterpiece is the "Encyclopedic." Then another crisis arose with Rousseau for herald. With a fire and an enthusiasm 8 KMII.E BOUTROUX whose influence the world still feels, he exalted the virtue and the happiness which spring from a naive confidence in the simple sugges- tions of the heart and of nature and claimed for these the superiority over the intelligence working apart from the soul and from the sense of life. Not that he ended with the idea of proscribing the sciences and the intelligence. He was not long in recognizing that, once lighted, the torch of science can never go out. And so, although he rejects the idea of science as the master of life he accepts the idea of science as the servant of life: the sciences and the intelligence have a wholesome and neces- sary part in culture if they are directed by the heart restored to its primitive rectitude. In this way, at many recurrent intervals during the course of human evolution, the genius of culture has set itself face to face with the genius of science threatening to take possession of the entire man, and has tri- umphed over the tyrannical pretensions of its rival, without denying to science, kept in its proper place, the right to its legitimate development. SCIENCE AND CULTURE 9 We are now passing through a new crisis. Once more science proclaims: "All reality belongs to me! The entire personality of man belongs to me!" And once more man feels astonished and asks: "Is it then definitely proved that my personality is nothing but a vain show? That I am really a thing like other things and that human culture, like the cultivation of trees or plants, ought to be reduced to the passive application of laws for- mulated by the theoretical sciences?" The principle of culture up to the present time has triumphed over the assaults which have been made upon it. Is it to be expected that the result of the present crisis will be the same? II It might seem enough for the resolution of this question to appeal to that law of rhythm and alternation which in a general way gov- erns the manifestations of life. Humanity seems to be walking like a drunken man, now escaping a fall to the left hand by an exag- gerated movement to the right, now throwing 10 EMILE BOUTROUX himself back, by a movement just as exag- gerated, from right to left, and so on ad in- finitum. Science — culture, culture — science would thus become like the two extremes of the oscillation of a pendulum and the very pre- tension of the science of the present day to a universal hegemony would be nothing but the prelude to the compensating triumph of culture. That way of resolving the problem a priori, is too simple. There is nothing to prove that humanity must repeat itself to all eternity, and it may very well be that, at a certain moment of its development, the oscillatory movement may give place to a definite prog- ress in one of the two directions, to the exclu- sion of the other. Science, the champions of "Scientism" may say, has, in our day especially, acquired new characteristics and it is not proper to judge of its destiny in the future by the vicissitudes of a past dead beyond hope of resurrection. Human affairs move not only by alternation but also by evolution proper and all evolu- tion is irreversible. SCIENCE AND CULTURE 11 The physics of Herachtes, of Empedocles, of Anaxagoras could easily bow in reverence before a philosophy of culture, because it was itself, to some extent, an art as well as a science. The object of the researches of Heraclites is, according to his own statement, an invisible harmony more beautiful than the visible one: ap^ovir) a^avr]<; ^aveprjf; ^peirrodv. The scholasticism of the Middle Ages, based on authority, could not maintain its position before a criticism absolutely resolute to submit without pity all human beliefs to discussion by the reason and to the test of nature. And however extended the domain of sci- ence and of intellectual systematization may have been in the eighteenth century, it was very far from embracing all parts of reality. Science lacked instruments and appropriate methods for extending the reign of its laws beyond physical nature to life and the human soul. That is why feeling, making head once more, was able to stop the progress of its adversary and, in a short while, to display U KMILE BOUTROUX itself triumphantly and without restraint in the art and literature of Romanticism. Conditions are not the same today; and there is really place for the question whether the pretensions of science, so often renewed, to govern by her sole power, not only all hu- man knowledge but all human life, are not on the verge of a final triumph. The general evolution of humanity could in that case be formulated thus: from man to things, from feeling to reason, from art to science. The science of today, the apostles of "Sci- entism" say, is aware of possessing certitude. The science of today rests on facts and logic and the history of human thought, as well as the analysis of human knowledge, has demon- strated that the observation of facts combined with logic is the only means of reaching that complete agreement between different minds, apart from which there is no such thing as true certitude. That is not all. Claiming for its domain all objects the knowledge of which can be gained by experience and logic, science has the right not only to claim the possession of SCIENCE AND CULTURE 13 certitude but also to deny that there is cer- titude anywhere else but in science. Doubtless, according to the opinion of the average man, there is a certitude based on feeling alone and the energy which character- izes it is no less than that which is inherent to scientific certitude. But science sees in it nothing but a condi- tion of soul entirely subjective, comparable to dream or desire. The word belief or fancy would be better adapted to describe it. Far from its being the case that truth depends on certitude, we must rather say that certitude depends on truth. Let nobody, then, pretend to know, where science confesses ignorance. Nothing is knowahlp for inqn hut whqt cqn he scientifically know n. Consider also, the scientists urge, that, since Galileo and Descartes, the whole domain of being has come little by little under the con- trol of science. Doubtless science is not sat- isfied unless she measures and calculates and many facts taken by themselves cannot be measured; for instance, all vital phenomena; and psychological phenomena are even more 14 EMILE BOUTROUX intractable. But science has in that respect invented the method of indirect measure or equivalent. For phenomena immeasurable in themselves she substitues phenomena directly measurable, connected with the first by an exact law. Thus, for example, heat is meas- ured, not in itself, but by the height of a col- umn of mercury. Thanks to the generaliza- tion of this method, there is no phenomenon which cannot theoretically be submitted to scientific investigation, and Berthelot was able to say from the standpoint of rights if not of facts : "Nature has for us no more mysteries." We are then told not only that there is no certitude outside of science, but that the juris- diction of science includes everything. How then can there be a culture outside of science? You may allege the irreducibility of feel- ing, the opposition we perceive each day be- tween the intelligence and the heart, science and life. But the celebrated English philos- opher, Leslie Stephen, has given for this fact an explanation which very much diminishes its importance. "The imagination," he says, "lags behind the reason." Imagination, feel- SCIENCE AND CULTURE 15 ing, will, do not follow the reason except at a distance and, in a way, in spite of them- selves. Yet little by little they must yield to the action of reason, for this latter is intangi- ble and irresistibly increases steadily in power, while feeling, in spite of its repugnance, can always be weakened and naturally grows weaker with time. Drops of water falling without ceasing finally wear away the solid rock. This solution of the conflict is certainly the one a man of intelligence ought to hope for and the one he ought to work to bring about. Besides, adds the scientist, science as she learns more perfectly her own nature and power becomes more sufficient for education and culture. In the first place, she teaches better than anyone the worship of truth, and what is more noble, more sure, more just than to consecrate oneself to that sublime religion? To seek for truth — that is not only to realize in oneself, in all its purity, intellectual virtue; it is — by the subordination of material interests to an ideal interest, by the friendship which the 16 EMILE BOUTROUX seeker naturally forms with those who pursue the solution of the same problems, by the joy which one feels in possessing a blessing as real as it is sublime — to develop in oneself, in the most certain way, moral virtue. By general consent, scientific study and re- search are not only the acquisition of knowl- edge — an external enriching of the mind ; they are literally a culture. They may indeed be called the necessary and sufficient culture. There is, indeed, no essential faculty of the human soul which science does not develop and direct in the best way. And, so far as those sides of our nature are concerned which require for their development the rejection of scientific influence, they should be considered — not as permanent characteristics of man, but as sur- vivals of a past condition which it is highly desirable to obliterate. Such seems to be today, in the words of some of her representatives, the ambition of science. If that pretension is well founded, the ancient conflict of science and culture is at last ended. Science has definitely con- quered and no counter triumph of culture as SCIENCE AND CULTURE 17 irreducible to science, is henceforth possible. Science is herself theory and practice — truth and action — the abstract and the concrete — knowledge and life. Ill Before asking ourselves if that conception is true or false, it might perhaps be interesting to try to form a picture of what human life would become if it were actually governed in all its parts by science and only by science. It is one thing indeed to sing hosannas in honor of science; it is another thing to see clearly all the consequences which the exclu- sive sovereignty of science would bring to pass. If it appears that these consequences would be enormous and paradoxical, it by no means follows that the principle is false, be- cause the mission of truth is not to be agree- able to us, yet such an outcome of the principle will be an additional reason for not accepting it without a close examination. Auguste Comte loved to repeat that to sur- render human life to the men of learning and 18 ]fiMILE BOUTROUX nothing else, would be to break all the moral and social bonds which exist at the present moment among men and to divide humanity >yinto groups of specialists, strangers or even enemies to one another. Science knows no other social relations except those which re- ^ suit from the division of labor. An entirely external coordination would, then, replace that community of feeling, thought and exis- tence which characterizes our existing society, born of the family and dominated by the idea and the feeling of humanity. And, warming to the discussion, the founder of positivism plunged with growing passion into invective ^ against the professional vanity, the onesided \ spirit, the absence of mutual understanding, \ the lack of practical sense which he attributed to men of learning who are nothing else. He particularly disliked mathematicians or mathe- matically-minded men, and held them respon- sible for all the evils which afflict society — "^^ especially for the French revolution, that abomination of desolation. — Auguste Comte was a little reckless in his use of anathemas, and the men of learning SCIENCE AND CULTURE 19 punished him by insinuating that his brain probably never quite recovered from the de- rangement which twice attacked it. Without sharing the fury of Auguste Comte, one can notice that scientific work presupposes more and more an extreme spe- ciahzation, and that, in conformity with this requirement, the system of faculties distinct and autonomous enjoj^s, in our universities, a growing favor. In perfect calmness we can observe that, in our society greedy for progress and above all for scientific progress, the certificates for elementary studies are, more and more, the only ones which still keep a general character. Have we not therefore the right to suppose that, if men were guided by science alone, they would be comparable, looking at society as a whole, to workmen in ^ factories, each one shut up to the special task which has been assigned to him. But, you will say, does not man remain with his social sense, with his love for the traditions of his country and his race, with his ideal as- pirations which the role of a wheel in a ma- chine can never satisfy? Are not these real 20 EMII.E BOUTROUX data which a science resolutely experimental could not fail to recognize and respect? These realities, it is to be noticed, gain their moral and social meaning from the subjective elements which they include. But the func- tion of science is to eliminate the subjective and to resolve it into the objective. She would not, therefore, know how to attribute the slightest value to our aesthetic, moral or religious ideas as we are conscious of them. If, at the present moment, science does not see the way to resolve them completely into objective elements, she thinks such a resolu- tion possible, and the attachment of man to those idols which he has created himself can not be, for her eyes, anything but superstition, routine, error. To sum up — the task which science sets before herself, the task which she thinks it both a right and a duty to consider realizable, is to dissolve and to reduce to an infinite number of units of energy entirely \ physical everything which constitutes the es- sence of man. Her manner of explaining man means suppressing him. When man ate the fruit of the tree of science, he signed. SCIENCE AND CULTURE 21 in a very real sense his own death warrant. If, some day, science reahzes her ambitions, man, deprived of eveiything which gives him a reason for Hving, will either disappear or will be so changed as to resemble in nothing what we call man. This is doubtless an ideal limit which practically does not seem possible of attainment. But, if science ought to be our only guide, this is the goal we march towards, and we ought to measure human progress by the extent to which humanity is dehumanized. Whatever may be the feelings which the prospect of such a destiny arouses in us, we have nothing to do, if we are reasonable, ex- cept to accept it gracefully. For, even though we rebel, we shall be none the less forced to bow to it, and then we shall be at the same time conquered and culprits. rjv 8e fJLT) OeXo), one could say, using the words of the Stoic Cleanthes: What dignity would man pre- «».—■<• 111 ^ II— M— » »n iii m serve if he put his pride above the truth? But is this the truth? Is science reallv des- 22 :emile boutroux tined to absorb the whole man and to reduce him to the dust of atoms? That hypothesis arises from a misunder- standing which Descartes denounced long ago. It supposes a confusion between science al- ready formed or made and science which is in the making, or rather, a confusion between science considered as a thing in itself and science as it actually exists. If science were a thing in itself, ready made from all eternity — if man had nothing to do but to discover it as a treasure buried in the ground is discover- ed, then it would be true that man does not really exist except in a scientific form — that is to say, so far as he is a man, he does not exist at all. But that so-called science in itself, is nothing but a creation of reason, imagined by metaphysicians of the absolute or by university professors inclined by profession to dogmatism. The only science which exists is the science which is being formed, the sci- ence which is becoming science — and that is not really a discovery — it is rather an inven- tion. If there is one result which is plain from the deep study which, in our day espe- \ SCIENCE AND CULTURE 23 cially, has been made of the origin of science, it is this: the essential and continuous part which the original activity of the mind has played and plays, both in the formation and elaboration of scientific concepts and in es- tablishing the relations of phenomena to those concepts. I would be glad to apply to all science the theory which I have seen my mas- ter M. Michel Breal sustain in regard to lan- guage. Against those who assume to explain the phenomena of language by purely me- chanical laws immanent in language itself, to wit: by simple invariable connections of ele- mentary linguistic phenomena, Michel Breal sustains the proposition that the mind, for its own ends and by its own activity, with its capacity for trying, for groping its way, for choice, for adaptation, for aesthetic arrange- ment, for improving, is the true creator and modifier of language. 31 ens agitat molem: Mind moves the whole. Doubtless it would be possible, to some extent, to reduce any given language to a fixed mechanical system, so that its constitution could be more easily taught to students whose memory was better 24 EMII.E BOUTROUX than their judgment. But the method of teaching is not the way of creation. The real development of language is not intelligible without making an appeal to the living mind as an essential factor. Novs oLv eL7) TO)v apx^iv - ^ Intelligence should be considered a principle, says Aristotle. And the proud declaration of Descartes stands more unassailable than ever: Scientiae omnes nihil aliud sunt quarn humana sapientia [sive bona mens^, quae semper una et eadem manet, quantumvis differentihus subjectis applicata:^ All the different sciences are but human wisdom [or good sense], which always remains the same, though it may be applied to most different subjects. The truth is that science herself, this lan- guage par excellence, refers us to that living spirit — to that subjective principle — which she thought to dissolve into its elements and to eliminate without pity. Not only is it true that she was born from thought, but it is also true that she can never preserve her value and ^Aristotle, Anal, post., s. f. ^Descartes, Reg. ad direct, ing., init. SCIF.XCR y\ND CULTURE 2.5 her power of improvement except by remain- ing substantially united to that spirit and ac- tivity. "Separate words from the mind which expresses itself in them," said Plato, "and then ask them what they mean: they will keep solemnly silent," ae^ivox^ irdw criya . Sci- ence can no more do without spirit than the colors produced by the reflection of light can exist without the sun. But if science, far from absorbing spirit and reducing it to the mechanism she constructs, depends as a matter of fact eternally on spirit, as the leaves and the flowers depend on the tree, it is of the greatest interest to science that spirit should receive the culture which is appropriate, the culture which best assures the health, the vigor, the fecundity of spirit. That culture, however, of which science is at once the aim and the measure — is it suffi- cient for our needs? The scientific faculty is not the only one which is essential for us. We find also in our- selves other ruling faculties: the practical, the artistic, the religious faculty. If our spirit is really in itself a being, a 26 P^MILE BOUTROUX principle, a power irreducible and original, why would we not develop all parts of its essential being? Science which presupposes spirit and lives in its life, is herself interested in a culture which will make the spirit as rich and harmonious as possible. Today, then, as in the epoch of the Renais- sance, or in the age of the Sophists and Socra- tes, it remains true that man ought not to lose himself in science, even the largest and the best established science, but that he ought to recognize that he has the right and the duty to cultivate in himself humanity as such, to be truly a man in the sense at once the largest and the most specific of the word. We can still say with Menander: 'II9 \apUv iaO^ av6p(t)7ro^j orav avSpoiTTO^ f), \ What an admirable thing is man when he is truly man ! IV How shall we conceive and practice today that culture of man as man, which, in spite of all the changes in society, and even in spite of the unheard-of progress of science, remains SCIENCE AND CULTURE 27 the condition of all progress and the supreme goal to which all our efforts ought to be directed? Nothing is truer than the affirmation re- peated incessantly among us, about the educa- tive value of the sciences, provided the nature and the service of science are correctly un- derstood. True science is not a system of compartments, built once for all, where all the objects found in nature must come by consent or by force to be arranged in order. Science Y is the very mind of man, exerting itself to un- derstand things and, to succeed in that, as far as possible moulding itself, accommodating itself, enlarging itself, diversifying itself in order to pass in its vision beneath the super- ficial and uniform aspect of beings and to pen- etrate to some extent their infinite and subtle individuality. That is why the science which is truly edu- cative is not the science which assumes to be complete, finished and infallible in its logical simplicity. It is the science which works, which seeks, feels its way, criticises itself, cor- rects itself, considers itself always provisional i 28 EMILE BOUTROUX and behaves itself as provisional. The science useful in education is not a science fixed in rigid definitions with a view to teaching and examinations, it is the living science, grasped in the very act of making itself in the labora- tories. The first sort of science is easily accepted by professors and students whose laziness it flatters; it favors dogmatism, routine, aprior- \ ism, the assumption of ability to judge all things according to exact and absolute rules. The man who has allowed himself to be moulded in this way by his scientific studies, beholds with impatience the complexity and the obscurities of real things, the secret spring of life and activity which makes them rebel- lious against arrangement in a logical system. He likes to treat qualities like quantities, re- alities like abstractions, and to believe that a problem is resolved the moment; eliminating every thing that cannot be reduced to exact and clear concepts, he has deduced from cer- tain principles, plausible in themselves, con- sequences logically correct. Living science on the other hand — the SCIENCE AND CULTURE 29 science which follows reality instead of trying to make reality conform to itself — steadily teaches the mind to break away from that tyranny of habit which is nothing but the sur- render of the native liberty of spirit to the law of inertia which is the particular quality of matter. In the effort to proportion means to ends, to recognize the complexity and the par- ticular nature of objects in themselves, she appeals to the spirit of sagacity as well as to the spirit of geometry. She not only develops the power of external observation and logical deduction but she sharpens that sort of judg- ment which discerns the agreement of meth- ods and problems, the meaning and value of results. Of course we must reject the contention of certain romanticists, that science ought to be controlled by literature, unless we are pre- pared to accept the cult of matter, figures and force. But, we must recognize, on the other hand, that, if the sciences are to take in the education of mind their due place, they must be taught, not by the dogmatic method of a professor who is nothing but a professor, but. 80 EMILE BOUTROUX as far as possible, by the heuristic method, namely the method which a man of learning uses in his researches. On the other hand, since the object of cul- ture is the development of man as man, it is evident that the study of letters has as much right to be a part of it as the study of science. For, if the sciences show us the effort of the human mind to take possession of things, let- ters show us the very life of man, made visible to himself in his consciousness and expressed in the language best fitted not only to analyze that life acutely, but to exalt it, to beautify it, to ennoble it by the charm or the grandeur of the very expression of it. If letters are to fulfill their educational function, we must not look on them as a mere branch of scientific knowledge. It is true that erudition, which is next door to the nat- ural sciences, plays a necessary part in literary studies. But erudition bears the same rela- tion to literature which technique bears to art. It puts us in possession of the elements and the instruments: it takes no account of the internal operation which from these minted SCIENCE AND CULTURE 31 and banal data creates a living and personal work of art. When we find in the authors Pascal has read, in Montaigne for example, more and more of the ideas and even the ex- pressions which form the material of the im- mortal "Pensees," we only demonstrate with still greater clearness the incommensurability between materials and form ; because, after all, the work of Pascal differs radically from the work of Montaigne. Pascal himself said: "The thoughts of an author transplanted in the mind of another writer make, sometimes, a quite new and different growth." JLes memes pensees poussent quelquefois tout autrement dans un autre que dans leur auteur. In spite of the marvellous progress which erudition and the objective study of literary phenomena are making from day to day, let- ters remain essentially different from the sci- ences, and that is just the reason why letters have a part in education which is peculiarly their own. In a sense diametrically opposed to the su- perstition of erudition, it is not uncommon nowadays, to hear a defence of the proposition S2 EMILE BOUTROUX that, in order to take their proper place in hfe, letters and art must become entirely con- scious of their essential nature, and that this principle peculiar to them, is seen to be, when looked at in its purity, feeling entirely separa- ted from intelligence. This doctrine is what we may call Aestheticism. It affirms the in- dependence and the sovereignty of art, the supremacy of life and intuition, the superna- tural and almost divine nature of genius as an infinite and arbitrary power of creation. Such a doctrine is very opportune and has a useful place in epochs when humanity is tempted to believe that the creative power of the mind is an illusion, when learned men try to persuade us that what we call new, original, a work of genius, appears to be such only because we do not know all its antecedents. By exalting beyond measure the aesthetic fac- ulty, this doctrine may awaken and excite it. In order to develop the forces we possess it is sometimes useful to think we have forces we do not possess. It is, however, worth noticing that the idea of an art which rests on intuition alone, on SCIENCE AND CULTURE 33 feeling separate from intelligence, scarcely ever appears except at the beginning or end of a great period in the history of art. At the beginning, because science is not capable of keeping pace with inspiration; in the age of decadence, because, tired of beauty which has become classic, certain refined spirits set them- selves to look for strange sensations. Art, in the time of full flower, is intellectual and prac- tical, as well as properly aesthetic. In the ages of its highest development, art tends to express, in an idealizing manner, human life in its totality. The Parthenon is not some- thing luxurious, built only to satisfy dilettanti. It expresses national beliefs, it possesses the harmony, at once exact and delicate, of a Greek tragedy. And the beauty which streams from it, is the beauty of light, which not only charms the eye but illuminates the world and maintains life. The truth is that the starting point of the theory which sees in art a quite independent activity of humanity is contrary to reality. There is not in our consciousness any feeling entirely isolated from thought, any intuition 34 EMILE BOUTROUX empty of all concept, any creation indepen- dent of ideas. If man should try to feel and produce outside of all ideas and all rules, he would become by his own consent, the slave of chance and mechanical necessity, and would produce nothing but bizarre and insignificant works. The activity of genius is not pure cre- ation; it is the production of beautiful things ' — of things stamped with the seal of perfec- tion and eternity. An intuition without a concept is for man an impossibility or a simple datum without determinable value. The problem, then, is not to find out how we can set feeling free from all connection with the intellect, but to form an idea of the way in which our intuitions and our intellect- ual concepts can mingle with each other in such a manner that, without losing sponta- neity and freedom, the creations of our imagi- nations may be regular, harmonious and in conformity with the laws of intelligence. The study of letters, consequently, ought not to have for its object the development of the imagination considered by itself as an arbi- SCIENCE AND CULTURE 35 trary and capricious capacity for creating. Its object is, rather, the cultivation of taste, or judgment, of what in its highest form is genius — that is to say, that marvellous faculty whose characteristic it is to see, as if intuitive- ly, and to produce, as if spontaneously, things which subsequent analysis proves are perfectly in accord with reason and truth. Literary studies, if they are properly carried on, do not in the least neglect the scientific side of knowl- edge. But they incorporate science with the imagination and the judgment to the extent of transforming it, as it were, into sentiment and intuition. From the considerations we have laid before you, we conclude that human culture, when properly carried on, ought to be at the same time scientific and literary — in a word, uni- versal. In reality, all things in nature cling to each other. A thing isolated from other things, is, because of that very fact, imperfectly and inexactly understood. In order to see justly, we must see everything in its relation to the whole, and, to succeed in raising human nature 36 EMILE BOUTROUX towards its ideal form, we must exercise and develop harmoniously all the faculties of man. But, if that is the case, is not the task which a true culture implies really chimerical, and is it not more practical, instead of aiming to reach something sublime but inaccessible, to restrict ourselves to specialization and the division of labor which is the method approved by human industry and by nature herself. Certainly the task is just now more difficult than it ever was. But it has not lost its glory and it is worth while not to give up the ideal without having done all in our power to come nearer to its realization. The universality whose reconciliation with specialization concerns us, can be understood in several ways. It can be defined as the possession of all the knowledge and of all the talents which human nature is capable of possessing. Now it is only too clear that, in this sense, universality is an Utopia, not to say an ab- surdity. A very small number of men, in the past, are reputed to have united in them- selves all knowledge then possessed by the na- SCIENCE AND CULTURE 37 tion to which they belonged. Such a preten- sion, today, would be madness: if we were to divide among so many different objects the small amount of intellectual force we possess, we should condemn ourselves to have nothing but vague and useless ideas in regard to every one of them. Universality can, in the second place, be understoood in a perfectly logical sense as the possession of the general ideas which are the underlying principles of the different sciences and the different arts. But such ideas, taken by themselves — that is to say, separated from the consideration of the details of things — are scarcely more than empty rubrics, useful at best only to furnish subjects for commonplace conversations or for abstract and sterile disputations. There is a third way of understanding uni- versality, and that is to look for it, not in the objects of knowledge, or, even, in the con- cepts which interpret their common character- istics, but in the spirit of man as a living nature, the virtualities of which surpass both the concepts of the intelligence, and the objects 38 ^MILE BOUTROUX of science. In a general way what we call life, soul, spirit, is the conciliation and reunion by a sort of fusion and internal transfiguration of qualities which, in the world of space and matter, are invincibly exterior and impenetra- ble to each other. How can, for example, identity and change get united? An insolu- ble problem in the material or logical world. But life conciliates these two terms. The liv- ing being remains himself, while he is evolving. How, in the world of matter, can anything be at the same time young and old, live in the present, the past and the future, inhabit simul- taneously different regions of space? The mode of existence which we call consciousness solves those paradoxical problems. Cannot the spirit of man solve in its own way the problem of general culture? When a man practices a science for a long time and intelligently, he acquires not only a certain amount of knowledge but, in addition, a certain intellectual disposition which cannot be expressed in any formula, but which is, none the less, real and usable. Thanks to that intellectual disposition, the man of learn- \ SCIENCE AND CULTURE 39 ing makes an easy and assured progress in the science he has studied. He has assimilated the spirit of that sort of knowledge in such a way that, henceforth, he finds himself at home there. Now it is a characteristic of human nature, that when several individuals have intercourse with each other, they not only exchange from without certain definite pieces of information or methods of action, but, by a sort of internal contagion from soul to soul and mind to mind exert a reciprocal influence. "It is the peculiar characteristic of mind," says Goethe, "t^ arouse perpetually the activity of mind." Dies ist die Eigenschaft des Geistes, dass er den Geist ewig anregt. And that influence of one spirit upon an- other, is much more certain and effectual, when there is not only an exchange of intel- lectual ideas, but a union of hearts. Who knows, indeeed, whether that may not be an indispensable condition? "It is impossible," said Xenophon, "to learn anything from a master one does not love": ^jnqhevl fjurj^eixLav eivai Trdihevcriv irapa tov firj apicrKovro^;. 40 EMILE BOUTROUX What then is needed in order that human intelhgence may make real for men, in the sense in which it is proper and possible, that universality of culture towards which we ought to strive? The means of encouraging in the most in- timate and fruitful way that mutual mingling of intelligences, would be to unite under the same roof and to invite to a common life, men, devoted to different sciences, already some- what advanced in their respective studies, but still young enough to have supple minds. If these young men form bonds of friend- ship, as is natural between noble and generous hearts in love with higher culture, their life together will not only be charming and a joy, it will bring about insensibly an enlargement of their minds, it will give to each of them an idea of sciences and of methods of intel- lectual activity which he, by himself, has not the leisure to cultivate, and so it will lead the young men on the road towards that univer- sality of comprehension and of sympathy which is the ideal of human culture. The creation of a community like the Grad- \ SCIENCE AND CULTURE 41 uate College of Princeton is a method very happily conceived of solving, so far as the education of the mind is concerned, the great problem already admirably formulated by the Sages of Greece: IIw? Se fjiOL ev TL TOL TTOLvr icrraL kol x