The future of science

Front matter

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Preface

The year 1848 made an exceedingly keen impression upon me. Until then I had never given a thought to socialistic problems. Those problems, starting from the earth, as it were, and frightening people, got hold of my mind and became an integral part of my philosophy. A paper on the study of Greek in the Middle Ages which I had begun in answer to a question of l'Academie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres had engrossed all my thoughts. After that I passed my examination as Doctor of Philosophy in September. Towards October I felt myself again. fl felt the need of summing up in a volume the new faith which with me had replaced shattered Catholicism?! This took me the last two months of 1848 and the first four or five months of 1849. The beginner's naive but ambitious dream was to publish that big volume there and then. On the 15th July, 1849, I gave an extract from it to La Liberie de Penser with a note to the effect that the volume would appear in a few weeks.

It was a great piece of presumption indeed. About the time I wrote those lines, M. Victor Le Clerc bethought himself to have me, in conjunction with my friend Charles Daremberg, entrusted with vi Preface.

various researches in the public libraries of Italy in connection with the literary history of France and a thesis I .had began on Averroism. This journey which lasted eight months influenced my mind very materially. The artistic side of life which had till then been almost closed to me revealed itself resplendent and comforting. A fairy wielding an enchanting power seemed to say to me what the Church in her hymn says to the wood of the Cross.

A sort of soothing breeze made me unbend, nearly all my illusions of 1848 vanished as utterly impossible of realization. I became aware of the fatal necessities of human society, resigned to a state of things in which a great deal of evil is the necessary condition of a small amount of good, in which an imperceptible quantity of aroma is extracted from an enormous caput mortuum of spoiled matter.

I became reconciled in certain respects to the reality, and when on my return I took up the book written a twelvemonth before I found it to be harsh, dogmatic, sectarian and hard.

My thought in its primary shape lay on my back_ like a load sticking out on all sides and getting entangled everywhere. My ideas too autocratic for conversation were still less fit for publication as a whole. Germany, whose pupil I had been for some years, had made me too much in her own image and that in a kind of production in which she does not shine, in " book-making." I felt convinced

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that French readers would find all this insufferably clumsy.

I consulted several friends, especially Augustin Thierry, who treated rne like a son. This worthy man finally persuaded me not to make my entree in the literary world with this enormous bundle on my head. He predicted a complete failure with the public and advised me to proceed piecemeal, to contribute to the Revue des Deux Mondes and to the Journal des Debats articles on various subjects in which I would get rid retail of the stock of ideas which presented in compact bulk would inevitably frighten the reader. The boldness of the theories would in that way be less likely to shock people's notions. Men of the world often accept in small doses what they refuse to swallow as a whole.

A little while after M. de Sacy encouraged me to do the same thing. The old Jansenist was fully alive to my heresies. When I read my articles to him I noticed his smile at every respectful or cajoling sentence.

There is no doubt that the huge volume whence all this came with its heavy style and very indifferent literary form would have simply horrified him. It \ was plain enough that if I meant to appeal to culti-

vated people, I should be bound to leave a great deal of my baggage at the door. My ideas dawn upon me in an involved way, they only become clear after a labour similar to that of a gardener who trims a tree, lops away its dead branches and trains it against the wall.

In that way I retailed the huge volume which thanks to sound advice and friendly counsel had been consigned to the bottom of one of my drawers.

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The Coup d'Etat which happened shortly afterwards had the effect of binding me more firmly to the Revue Deux Mondes and the Journal cles Debats, in my disgust at the people who on the 2nd December greeted the signs of grief of the honest citizen with ironical smiles. I was engrossed with special studies, travel, my" Origins of Christianity" left me no time to think of anything else for twenty-five years. I made up my mind that the old MSS. should be published after my death, that it would then afford pleasure to a select section of enlightened minds, that it might succeed perhaps in fixing on me once more that attention of the world of which the dead stand in so much need in the unequal competition the living thrust upon them in that respect.

My life having been prolonged beyond my expectations I lately made up my mind to be my own publisher. I flattered myself that perhaps some people would read these ancient, honest pages not without profit to themselves and that the rising generation especially, which seems to be somewhat uncertain about its road, would be pleased to find out how a young man, very frank and very sincere thought forty years ago, face to face with himself only. Young people like the work of young people.

In my writings intended for men and women of the world I have been compelled to make many sacrifices. In the following pages which have undergone no process of boiling down the reader will meet with the young, conscientious Breton lad who one day ran away frightened from Saint- Sulpice because he fancied that part of what his masters had told him was perhaps not strictly true. A day may come when the critics will maintain that the Revue

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des Deux Mondes and the Journal des Dehats spoilt me insomuch that they taught me to write, that is, constantly to condense and prune my ideas. That day they may perhaps like these pages for which I only claim one merit, that of showing in his natural and as yet uncorrupted state and suffering from violent inflammation of the brain a young man living solely with his own thoughts and believing frantically in the truth.

In fact, the blemishes of this first work are enormous, and if I had the slightest literary pride, I should have suppressed it altogether. The way I introduced my ideas lacks the commonest skill. It is a dinner in which the primary materials are good but which has been cooked and served up anyhow, the parings of the various ingredients not even, having been removed. I was too anxious not to, lose anything. Lest I should not be understood I insisted too much, in order to drive home the nail I fancied myself bound to knock" with all my might. The art of composing implying the cutting away of the tangled growths that might obstruct the light in " the forest of thought" was unknown to me, No one is brief at his first start.

The clearness and tact exacted by the French which, I am bound to confess, compel one to say only part of what one thinks and are damaging to depth of thought seemed to me so much tyranny. The French only care to express that which is clear, as it happens the most important truths, those that relate to the transformations of life are not clear ; one only perceives them in a kind of half-light. That is why, after having been the first to perceive the truth of what is called Darwinism nowadays, France has x Preface.

been the last to rally to it. They saw it well enough, but it was out of the beaten track of the language, it did not fit the mould of well-constructed phrases. In that way France passed by the side of precious truths not without seeing them, but simply flinging them among the waste paper as useless or impossible to express. At the start I wanted to say everything and I often said it badly. At the risk of tumbling into the realm of the unintelligible I endeavoured, to fix the fleeting essence, hitherto considered, as not worthy of consideration.

However much and. wisely or the reverse I may have modified my habits of style as regards exposition as little have I changed, my fundamental ideas from the moment I began to think for myself. My religion is now as ever the progress of reason, in other words the progress of science. But in looking over these pages of my youth, I often found a certain confusion which distorted certain deductions. Intensive culture constantly adding to the sum total of human knowledge is not the same thing as extensive culture disseminating that knowledge more and more for the welfare of the countless human beings in existence. The sheet of water in expanding continues to lose in depth. Towards 1700 Newton had acquired views on the system by which the earth was governed infinitely superior to everything that had been thought out before him without his matchless discoveries having in the least affected the education of the people. On the other hand one might reasonably conceive a state of exceedingly perfect elementary education without the higher sciences deriving much benefit therefrom. Our real motive for advocating elementary education is that a nation without education is fanatical and

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that fanatical nations are dangerous to -science, governments being in the habit of shackling freedom of thought in the names of popular beliefs and the so-called sanctity of family institutions.

Hence, the idea of a state of civilization with a levelling mission, such as it is presented in a few pages of this book is nothing more than a dream. A school in which the pupils would make the laws would be a sorry school indeed. Enlightenment, morality, art will always be represented among mankind by a magistracy, by a minority, preserving the traditions of the true, the good and the beautiful. But we must be on our guard against this magistracy disposing of the public forces and appealing to superstition and imposture in order to maintain its power.

There were also a great many illusions in my acceptance of the socialistic ideas of 1848 in bygone days. While still believing that science alone is capable of improving the unhappy lot of man here below, I have ceased to believe in the solution of the problem being as near as I believed it to be then. Inequality is one of nature's written laws, it is the consequence of liberty and the liberty of the individual is a necessary postulate of human progress. This progress implies a great sacrifice of individual happiness. The actual condition of humanity, for instance, demands the maintenance of separate nations which are establishments exceedingly heavy to bear. A condition which would afford the greatest possible happiness to individuals would probably, from the point of view of the ennobling pursuits of mankind, be a condition of profound abasement.

xii Preface.

The main error with which these old pages teem is an exaggerated optimism which fails or is determined not to see that evil still exists and that we have to pay dearly, that is in privileges, the power that protects us against this evil. The reader will also notice an old leaven of Catholicism ; the idea that we shall behold once more the age of belief when a compulsory and universal religion will prevail as it prevailed in the first half of the Middle Ages. Heaven preserve us from being saved in that fashion. Uniformity of belief, that is, fanaticism, can only come back in this world of ours in company with the ignorance and credulity of bygone centuries. I would by far have an immoral people than a fanatical people for immoral masses are by no means difficult to deal with while fanatical masses reduce the world to a state of imbecility, and a world condemned to a state of imbecility has no longer any claim on my interest; I would as lief see it perish. Let us suppose every orange tree to be smitten with a disease impossible of cure except on the condition of its no longer producing oranges. It would be so much time wasted seeing that the orange tree which does not produce oranges is worthless.

In order not to make this publication utterly devoid of all interest I had to submit to one condition, namely ; to reproduce my essay in its simple, matted, often abrupt form. I might just as well have written a new book as have attempted to correct numberless inaccuracies, to modify a great number of thoughts which at present appear to me either expressed in an exaggerated manner or which are no longer just, and moreover the framework of my old essay is by no means such as I would choose to-

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day.* Hence, I confined myself to the striking out of mistakes resulting from carelessness, those big blunders which one only notices in proof and which would assuredly have been corrected if I had published the book in times gone by. I have left the notes as a whole at the end of the volume. Many a passage will provoke a smile on the reader's part. It will make no difference to me as long as he, the reader, acknowledges that these pages contain the expression of great intellectual rectitude and perfect sincerity.

A great difficulty resulting from my decision of printing my purana as it stands was the resemblance between certain pages of the present work and many of works published before, a resemblance which cannot fail to strike the reader. Besides the fragment published in La Liberie de Penser which has been reproduced in my " Contemporary Essays," there are many other passages that have found their way either as regards the mere idea or as regards both the idea and its expression in several of my writings, notably in those belonging to my first period. I tried at first to excise this dualism, but it soon became patent to me that the book would not stand on its legs at all in that way. The parts that had been repeated were the most important, the whole structure, like a wall from which the most necessary stones have been abstracted, was toppling over. The simplest way out of the difficulty, I thought, was to appeal to the indulgence of the reader. Those who

* I have left all the passages in which I presented German culture as being synonymous with aspiration towards the idealistic. They were true when I penned them. It is not I who have changed.

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do roe the honour of reading my writings in the order they were written will, I trust, pardon those repetitions, if the present volume should succeed in showing them my ideas arranged and combined in a way that may present something novel and interesting to them.

In attempting to strike a balance between what has remained merely so much vision and what has been realized in those dreams of half a century ago I must confess to a feeling of appreciable moral satisfaction. After all, I was right. Excepting a few disappointments progress has travelled on the lines laid down in my imagination. At that period I did not see sufficiently clearly what man had left behind in the purely animal kingdom, I had not a sufficiently clear perception of the inequality of races but I had a just conception of what I may call the origin of life.

I perceived well enough that everything is accomplished in humanity and nature, that creation has no part nor parcel in the series of effects and causes. Too little of a naturalist to track the paths of life in the labyrinth which we see without seeing it, I was a determined evolutionist in all that appertains to the productions of humanity, language, literature, social forms, writings. I began to perceive that the morphological draughtboard of the vegetal and animal species was indeed the indication of a genesis ; that everything is born in accordance with a design of which we can only see the obscure canvas. The aim of science is an immense development of which the cosmological sciences give us the first perceptible links, of which history proper shows us the last expansions. Like Hegel I made the mistake of being

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too confident in attributing to mankind a central part in the universe.

The whole of human development may be of no more consequence than the moss or lichen with which every moist surface is covered. To us, though, the history of man stands first and foremost, seeing that humanity alone creates the conscience of the universe. A plant's only worth lies in its producing flowers, fruit, aroma, nourishing tubercules, which are of no account as a mass, if they are compared to the mass of the plant itself, but which possess the character of finality in a much greater degree than the leaves, branches and trunk.

Historical science and its auxiliaries, philological sciences, have made immense conquests since I took to them so fondly forty years ago. But the end can already be foreseen. In another century mankind will pretty well know everything that can be known about its past ; and then it will be time to stop, because the tendency of these studies is to begin their own destruction the moment they have reached comparative perfection. The danger of a revival of superstition will alone keep up the habit of critical disquisition at first hand.

The history of religion has been cleared up in its most important branches. It has become patent, not from a priori arguments, but from the very discussion of evidence that in the centuries open to men's researches there has been neither revelation nor supernatural fact. The onward course of civilization has been made manifest in its general laws. The inferiority of certain races to others is proved. The claims of each human family to a more or less honourable mention in the history of progress are pretty well decided.

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With regard to. the political and social sciences, one may safely say that progress during the last forty years has been slow. The old political economy whose pretensions were so noisily shouted forth in 1848, has been wrecked. Socialism which has been taken, up again by the Germans so earnestly and with so much study continues to trouble the world without arriving at a clear solution. Prince Bismarck who was to have stopped its progress in five years by means of repressive legislation has evidently been mistaken, at any rate this time. What appears very probable indeed is that there will be no end of socialism. But assuredly the socialism that will gain the victory will be different from the Utopism of 1848. A keen observer might have seen in the year 300 of our era that Christianity will not end; but ought also to have seen that the world will not end, that the latter will adapt the former to its needs and out of a belief destructive of all society, will make a sedative, a political machine, conservative to a degree.

In politics the situation is by no means more clear. The national principle has since 1848 been developed to an extraordinary extent. Representative government is established nearly everywhere.

But evident signs of the fatigue caused by national burdens are looming on the horizon. Patriotism is becoming local, national enthusiasm decreases. Modern nations resemble the heroes borne down by their armour, on the tomb of Maximilian at Innsbruck, ricketty bodies with iron masters over them. France who was the pioneer on that road will, following ordinary laws be the first to react against the movement she started. In fifty years the

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national principle will be on the decline. The terrible harshness of the proceedings by which the ancient monarchial States obtained the sacrifice of the individual will have become impossible in free States ; scarcely any one nowadays cares to provide the materials for those towers of Tamerlane, built up with corpses. In fact, it has become too clear that the happiness of the individual is not in direct proportion to the grandeur of the nation to which he belongs, and as a rule one generation cares very little about the why or wherefore a preceding generation has sacrificed its life.

These variations spring from the uncertainty of our ideas with regard to the object to be attained and the higher end of humanity. Between the two objects held out by political life, the grandeur of nations, and welfare of individuals the choice is prompted by interest or passion. There is no hint afforded to us either as to nature's will or the aim of the universe. For us, idealists, there exists but one true doctrine, the transcendental doctrine according to which the aim of humanity consists in constituting a loftier consciousness of the universe, or as we used to say, the highest glory of God ; but [it is very clear that this doctrine will afford no basis for a practical policy. Such an aim must, on the contrary, be carefully dissimulated.^ Men would revolt if they knew they were being thus exploited.

How long will national spirit be able to hold out against individual egotism ? Who, in centuries to come, will have served humanity most, the patriot, the liberal, the reactionary, the savant ? No one knows and still it would be a capital thing to know, for what is good in one of these hypotheses is bad xviii Preface.

in the other. One works the switches without knowing whither one wants to go. According to the goal to he reached France is doing either detestable or excellent work. Other nations are more enlightened. Politics are like a desert in which one marches at random towards the north or towards the south ; for we must keep on marching. No one knows where the good lies in the social order. There is or comfort, one is sure to land somewhere. In the kii of rifle competition with which humanity is amu^ itself the mark hit is supposed to be the marV at. In that way the good and true men a 1 a clear conscience. For the rest, in t±. >m state of general doubt, liberty in any case, ^as it? value, since it is a means of allowing free play to the" secret spring which moves humanity, and carries i$ along with or against its will.

To sum up ; if through the constant labour of the nineteenth century the knowledge of facts has considerably increased, the destiny of mankind has on the other hand become more obscure than ever. The serious thing is that we fail to perceive a means of providing humanity in the future with a catechism that will be acceptable henceforth, except on the condition of returning to a state of credulity. Hence, it is possible that the ruin of idealistic beliefs may be fated to follow hard upon the ruin of supernatural beliefs and that the real abasement of the morality of humanity will date from the day it has seen the reality of things. Chimeras have succeeded in obtaining from the good gorilla an astonishing moral effort ; do away with the chimeras and part of the factitious energy they aroused will disappear. Even glory, as a motive-power implies in some respects

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immortality, the fruit of it generally coming only after death. Suppress the alcohol on which the workman has hitherto relied for his strength, hut you must not ask him for the same amount of work.

Candidly speaking, I fail to see how, without the ancient dreams, the foundations of a happy and noble . fe are to he relaid. The hypothesis that the true r ige would be he who, barring to himself all distant '%izons, would confine himself to the perspective "^ vulgar gratification, this perspective, I say, has "%ely repugnant to us. However, man's

-ju. - ^ J-fand noble aims have rested before now on tfalse" foundations. The wisest thing to do, then, is ' to go on enjoying the supreme gifts vouchsafed to .is, life and the faculty of seeing the reality. Science will always remain the gratification of the noblest craving of our nature ; curiosity ; it will always supply man with the sole means of improving his lot. It protects him against error, though it may not reveal the truth to him, but there is an advantage in being certain of not being duped. Man fashioned according to this discipline is on the whole a better man than the instinctive man of the ages of faith. He is not subject to the errors to which the uncultured fatally yield, he is more enlightened, he commits fewer crimes, he is less sublime, but he is also less ridiculous. All this, it will be said, is not worth the heaven science takes away from us. First of all, who knows whether it does take it away ; secondly people are none the poorer for being robbed of bogus shares and false banknotes. A little true science is better than a great deal of bad science. One is less liable to error by confessing one's ignorxx Preface.

ance than by fancying that one knows a great many things one knows not.

Consequently I was right at the outset of my intellectual career firmly to believe in science and to make it the object of my life. If I had to begin again I should do exactly as I have done, and during the little time that remains to me I shall go on as I began.

Immortality means to labour at a lasting work. According to the primitive Christian idea, the true one, only those shall rise again who have contributed to the divine work ; furthering God's kingdom on earth. The punishment of the wicked and frivolous will be utter annihilation. Here a formidable objection starts up against us. Can science be more everlasting than humanity whose end is written down from the very fact of its having had a beginning ? It matters not ; human reason has not been engaged consecutively for more than a hundred years on the problem of matters mundane. It has already made some wonderful discoveries that have increased man's power a hundred, nay a thousandfold. What then will it be a hundred thousand years hence ? And pray remember that no truth is ever lost, that no error ever strikes root. All this makes us feel secure. We are really afraid of nothing except of the fallingin of the sky, and even if the sky came crashing down we should still go to sleep quietly with the thought, " The Being of whom we were the transitory blossom has always been, always will be."

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To Monsieur Eugene Burnoiif, Member of the Academy, Professor at the College de France,

Monsieuk,

During the last twelvemonth my thoughts have frequently gone back to that memorable 25th February 1848, when after having scaled the barricades to get to the College de France we found our modest room transformed into a guardroom, to which we were welcomed like so many suspected individuals. That day I asked myself more seriously than ever whether a man could do better than devote every moment of his life to study and to thought, and after having consulted my conscience and strengthened my faith in human intellect, I resolutely answered ; " No." If science were nothing more than an agreeable pastime, a kind of diversion for the idle, a mere costly ornament, a hobby for the amateur, in short the least vaig of all vanities, there might be times when the savant would have occasion to say with the poet ;

" Shame to him who sings, the while Eome burns."

But if science be a serious matter, if the destinies of mankind and the perfection of the individual be bound up with it, if it be a religion, it has like matters of religion its value every day, every moment of our lives. To devote to study and intellectual culture only our moments of peace and leisure is an insult to the human intellect, it is tacitly supposing that there is something more important than the pursuit of truth. If such were indeed the case, if science were only a matter of second rate importance how could the man who has resolved to devote his xxii Preface.

life to the attainment of the perfect, who wishes to be able to say at his last moments ; " I have accomplished my task," how could that man devote so much as a single hour to it, when he knows that higher duties claim him ?

That revolutions and the dread of the future offer a temptation to science ignorant of its aim, to science that has never endeavoured to ascertain its own value and true significance, is easily understood. As for serious and philosophical science which responds to a want of human nature, no social upheavals will succeed in affecting it, they may, on the contrary, be of use to it, by causing it to take itself to task, to verify its titles, to be no longer satisfied with the mere perfunctory judgment on which it was wont to base itself formerly.