November io, 1923] 



NATURE 



693 



application. I will not speak of those which have 

 driven physiologists of high standing to reject the 

 mechanistic theory of life as unworkable, for they do 

 not bear directly upon my argument. It will be more 

 to our purpose to raise, as William James did in his 

 great treatise on psychology, the question of the higher 

 aesthetic, moral, and intellectual qualities and achieve- 

 ments of man, and to ask how these are to be brought 

 under the conceptions before us. We will not press 

 the question how the emergence, say, of Beethoven's 

 Fifth Symphony is to be explained in terms of physics 

 and chemistry ; for even the most stalwart mechanists 

 scarcely expect that it will actually be done ; they only 

 believe that conceivably it could be done. But it is 

 l)oth fair and necessary to ask how the things of which 

 the symphony is typical can be accounted for on the 

 principle of survival-value. James, facing this question 

 with characteristic candour, felt bound to admit that 

 they have " no zoological utility." He concluded, 

 therefore, that the powers and sensibilities which make 

 them possible must be accidents — that is, collateral 

 consequences of a brain-structure evolved with refer- 

 ence not to them but only to the struggle for material 

 existence. The premises granted, I do not see how 

 the conclusion can be avoided ; but surely it is ex- 

 tremely unacceptable. If, with Herbert Spencer, we 

 could regard art merely as something wherewith to 

 fill agreeably a leisure hour, we might be satisfied by 

 the hypothesis that our sensibility to beauty in form, 

 in colour, and in sound, is an " epi-phenomenon " 

 having no significance in relation to the real business 

 of life. But when we think of men whose art was in 

 truth their life, and consider how eagerly the better 

 part of mankind cherishes their memory and their 

 works, it is next to impossible to be satisfied with that 

 view. Take the case of science. Votaries of pure 

 science often seek to justify their ways to the outer 

 world by the argument that discoveries which seemed 

 at first to have only theoretical interest have often 

 disclosed immense practical utility. It is a sound 

 enough argument to use to silence the Philistine, but 

 would the pursuit of science lose any whit of its dignity 

 and intrinsic value if it were untrue ? I will not 

 lengthen the argument by extending it to the saints 

 and the philosophers, for its point should be sufficiently 

 plain. The activities of " our higher aesthetic, intel- 

 lectual, and moral life " have such intrinsic worth 

 and importance that to regard their emergence as 

 accidental and biologically meaningless is outrage- 

 ously paradoxical. They must be at least of equal 

 significance with anything else in man's life, and may 

 not unreasonably be held to contain the clue to life's 

 whole meaning. 



It may be helpful to put the conclusion in other 

 language. Man's life is a tissue of activities of which 

 many are plainly conservative in nature, their function 

 l)eing directly or indirectly to maintain the existence of 

 the race and the individual. Agriculture, industry, 

 defence, medicine, arc obvious examples of the type. 

 But there are other activities — art and pure science 

 are capital examples — the character of which is best 

 indicated by the term creative. The point made is 

 that in any sane view of human life as a whole the 

 creative must be regarded as at least as significant and 

 important as the conservative activities. 



NO. 2819, VOL. I I 2I 



Purely conservative and purely creative activities, 

 if indeed they exist, are only limiting instances ; in 

 most, if not in all activities, the two characters are 

 interfused. For example, the motive of pure science is 

 unmistakably creative, yet its extrinsic conservative 

 value is uplimited ; on the other hand, the vast 

 industrial organisations of to-day exemplify activities 

 which, though conservative in their genesis, yet have 

 developed the creative character in an impressive 

 degree. Considerations of this kind prepare one to 

 see that the higher creative life, far from being merely 

 a splendid accident, is really the clearest and purest 

 expression of the essential character of life at all its 

 levels. The poets are, as the Greeks called them, the 

 supreme makers, for all making has in it something of 

 the stuff of poetry. In short, there is no life, however 

 humdrum, however crabbed by routine, which is not 

 permeated by the self-same element, the inflorescence 

 of which is literature, art, science, philosophy, religion. 



The foregoing discussion has a close bearing upon 

 the questions what should be taught and in what 

 spirit the teaching should be given. The curriculum 

 always will be a partial reflection of the actual life and 

 traditions of a community, and ought to reflect all the 

 elements therein which have the greatest and most 

 permanent value and significance. Without doubt 

 these will, in general, be the things that have the 

 highest significance and value for the human family as 

 a whole, but there can scarcely be said to be a common 

 human tradition. There exists, it is true, a common 

 European tradition based mainly upon the Graeco- 

 Roman and Christianity, and it is vastly important for 

 the happiness of the world to deepen and vivify men's 

 consciousness of it. But even this lacks the concrete- 

 ness needed to form the basis of popular education. In 

 short, a nation is the largest social unit whose ethos 

 has the necessary individuality. Hence, though we 

 should aim at making our young people " good 

 Europeans," we can do so only by shaping them into 

 that particular brand of good Europeans who are 

 rightly to be called good Englishmen. Hence the 

 importance of fostering in our elementary schools the 

 special traits of the English character at its best ; of 

 giving English letters a chief place among the studies 

 of our youth ; of cherishing the English traditions in 

 the arts and crafts, including our once proud art of 

 music ; even of reviving the old dances which were so 

 gracious and typical an expression of our native gaiety 

 and manners. 



Lest this contention should be misunderstood, I add 

 that I preach neither the hateful doctrine that what is 

 foreign should, as such, be excluded, nor the ignorant 

 and presumptuous doctrine that what is our own is 

 necessarily the best, and that we have nothing to learn 

 from other peoples. The whole burden of my argument 

 is that the things which have universal human value 

 are the things of most importance in education. But 

 the universal can be apprehended only where it lives 

 in concre^ embodiments. In the cases we are con- 

 cerned with, these are elements or organs of a national 

 culture ; and the only national culture to which a 

 child has direct and intimate access is his own. He 

 should be taught to see, as opportunity permits, how 

 much of it is derived from the common European 

 tradition and how much it owes to the influences of 



