36 ■ THE GRAMMAR OF SCIENCE 



that the aesthetic and scientific judgments are opposed ; 

 the fact is, that with the growth of our scientific know- 

 ledge the basis of the aesthetic judgment is changing and 

 must change. There is more real beauty in what science 

 has to tell us of the chemistry of a distant star, or in the 

 life-history of a protozoon, than in any cosmogony pro- 

 duced by the creative imagination of a pre-scientific age. 

 By " more real beauty " we are to understand that the 

 aesthetic judgment will find more satisfaction, more 

 permanent delight, in the former than in the latter. It is 

 this continual gratification of the aesthetic judgment 

 which is one of the chief delights of the pursuit of pure 

 science. 



§ 1 4. — TJie Fourth Claim of Science 



There is an insatiable desire in the human breast to 

 resume in some short formula, some brief statement, the 

 facts of human experience. It leads the savage to 

 " account " for all natural phenomena by deifying the wind 

 and the stream and the tree. It leads civilised man, on 

 the other hand, to express his emotional experience in 

 works of art, and his physical and mental experience in 

 the formulae or so-called laws of science. Both works of 

 art and laws of science are the product of the creative 

 imagination, both afford material for the gratification of 

 the aesthetic judgment. It may seem at first sight strange 

 to the reader that the laws of science should thus be 

 associated with the creative imagination in man rather 

 than with the physical world outside him. But, as we 

 shall see in the course of the following chapters, the laws 

 of science are products of the human mind rather than 

 factors of the external world. Science endeavours to 

 provide a mental resume of the universe, and its last great 

 claim to our support is the capacity it has for satisfying 

 our cravings for a brief description of the history of the 

 world. Such a brief description, a formula resuming all 

 things, science has not yet found and may probably never 

 find, but of this we may feel sure, that its method of 

 seeking for one is the sole possible method, and that the 



