Leading Articles in the Reviews. 



561 



MASTER MINDS. 



MR. BALFOUR AS THINKER. 



We want more of Mr. Balfour as thinker and 

 less of Mr. Balfour as politician. Therefore we 

 welcome Mr. Sidney Low's article in the Edin- 

 burgh Review on Mr. Balfour in the study. Mr. 

 Low refers to the tradition, of English political 

 life, which connects statesmanship with scholar- 

 ship. He says the latest of our literary Premiers 

 is certainly not the least accomplished of the 

 line. His studies have been somewhat more 

 serious than those of Lord Rosebery, and, in 

 reality, more fruitful than those of Mr. Glad- 

 stone. Of Mr. Balfour he says : — 



He has the ease, the polish, the dignified, mundane 

 temper, and the courteous restraint of the great writers 

 and artists of the eighteenth century, with whom he has 

 so many points of contact. We do not wonder that he 

 finds more pleasure in this society than in that of a more 

 recent period. His sympathetic interest in the intel- 

 lectual and aesthetic development of the nineteenth cen- 

 tury diminishes, he tells us, after the first third of that 

 cycle was passed. 



HIS BENT OF MIND. 



The bent of his mind is essentially scientific : 



Much as he loves literature, we may perhaps conclude 

 that he loves science more ; he would make scientific 

 study an essential element of all the higher education, 

 even at the expense, though not to the exclusion, of the 

 languages of Greece and Rome^ and it is plain that the 

 highest achievements of scientific discovery and though: 

 set him glowing with a warmth that is only rivalled by 

 the feeling stirred in him by some of the masterpieces 

 of art, and quite transcends the more temperate emotion 

 aroused by the triumphs of literature and of human 

 action. It is difficult to recall another writer of M. 

 Balfour's accomplishment who makes so little reference 

 to the poets of his own and other countries or indulges 

 so rarely in the luxury of a quotation from their works. 

 Nor is it hard to understand that he finds himself irre- 

 sponsive to the chords of the Sentimental Age, and that 

 he turns with satisfaction to the times when Science, it 

 is true, was in her infancy, but when the scientifig 

 temper, the scientific outlook upon life, dominated the 

 minds of men. 



CRITIC OF NATURALISM. 



Strangely enough, his chief works are con- 

 cerned with an attack upon the naturalism which 

 found its exponents amongst the most influential 

 group of scientific men in the nineteenth cen- 

 tury. The most powerful engine in his attack 

 upon materialism is the demonstration of the 

 limits of human experience. According to Mr. 

 Balfour's argument, 



the senses cannot guide us aright. They are only 

 useful tools; and the intellect, evolved like them to 

 enable the organism to modify itself and survive, is 

 little more capable than the senses, whose origin and 

 infirmities it shares, of finding a way through the laby- 

 rinth of appearances to the underlying reality, if any 

 reality there be. "We are to suppose that powers which 



were evolved in primitive man and his animal progeni- 

 tors, in order that they might kill with success and 

 marry in security, are on that account fitted to explore 

 the secrets of the universe." 



In the end science has to rely upon irrational founda- 

 tions, and is forced to assume a creative principle which 

 is not subject to the laws of causation as exhibited in 

 the material universe, and is not limited by the relations 

 of Space and Time. Science itself, like ethics and 

 resthetics, needs a non-natural, or a super-natural, basis. 



VINDICATOR OF CURRENT BELIEFS. 



The past few years have shown a reaction, as 

 witnessed by the interest taken in M. Bergson 

 and the revival of transcendental idealism in the 

 English universities. To this reaction Mr. 

 Balfour's own writings have contributed some- 

 thing : — 



The hypothesis of " a spiritual origin common to the 

 knower and the known " emerges, he holds unassail- 

 ably, from his consideration of the possible alternatives; 

 and he claims that he has shown " how, in face of the 

 complex tendencies which sway this strange age of ours, 

 we may best draw together our beliefs into a compre- 

 hensive unity which shall possess at least a relative and 

 provisional stability." That unity is found in the 

 " current beliefs " based on Christian theology, with 

 the acceptance of the Divine Incarnation and the miracles 

 recorded in the Gospels. 



MOST BELIEFS 



IRRATIONAL. 



Mr. Balfour maintains : — • 



The great majority of all our beliefs, scientific and 

 other, must be called irrational ; that is, they are not, 

 in the main, conclusions arrived at by any ratiocinative 

 process, nor are they obtained by the direct evidence of 

 our senses. 



In his chapters on Authority and Reason Mr. Balfour 

 dwells with much force on the entirely " irrational " 

 character of precisely those convictions which are held 

 with the most unquestioning faith. All men believe that 

 it is wrong to commit murder, without pausing to con- 

 sider why. 



The mere existence of a belief gives it a sanction ; 

 provided that its vitality has been shown by its per- 

 manence and wide diff'usion, that it is valuable in itself, 

 and that it supplies a basis not merely for the religious 

 emotions, but for philosophy, ethics, aesthetics, and even 

 scientific knowledge. Mr. Balfour urges that we must 

 believe in the Divine Reason and the Divine Purpose 

 because without them we have no escape from an entirely 

 irrational, and therefore an entirely meaningless, 

 Universe. 



Mr. Low declares that the apologetic side of 

 Mr. Balfour is thin and unsubstantial compared 

 with the critical portion. He adds : — 



But it is permissible to suggest that if the superior 

 attractions of a great public career had not exerted their 

 claim upon Mr. Balfour's energies he might well have 

 found his place among those whose metaphysical specu- 

 lations have exercised a permanent influence upon the 

 best thought of the world. 



Is it too late to hope that Mr. Balfour will 

 find here his long-delayed metier? 



