September 9, 19 15] 



NATURE 



39 



"Whence comes this harmony? Is it that things 

 that appear to us as beautiful are simply those which 

 adapt themselves best to our intelligence, and are 

 therefore the tools which that intelligence handles 

 most easily; or is it all the play of evolution and 

 natural selection? In that case, those races only 

 survived whose ideals best conformed' with their 

 interests, and while all nations pursued their ideals 

 without regard to consequences, some were led to 

 perdition and others achieved an empire. One is 

 tempted to believe that such has been the course of 

 history, and that the Greeks triumphed over the bar- 

 barians, and Europe, inheritor of Greek thought, 

 rules the world, because the savages cared only for 

 the sensual enjoyment of garish colours and the 

 blatant noise of the drum, while the Greeks loved the 

 intellectual beauty which is hidden beneath the visible 

 beauty. It is that higher beauty which produces a 

 clear and strong intelligence." If the mathematician's 

 imagination is fired by the beauty and symmetry of 

 his methods, if the moving spring of his action is 

 identical with that of the artist, how much truer is 

 this of the man of science who tries by well-designed 

 experiments to reveal the hidden harmonies of Nature? 

 Nor would it be difficult, I think, to trace the grati- 

 fication inherent in the successful accomplishments of 

 other intellectual pursuits to the same source. 



Though Poincar^ was, I believe, the first to lay 

 stress on the connection between the search for the 

 beautiful and the achievement of the useful, the 

 aesthetic value of the study of science had previously 

 been pointed out, and well illustrated, by Karl Pearson 

 in his "Grammar of Science." As expressed by him : 

 " It is this continual gratification of the aesthetic judg- 

 ment which is one of the chief delights of pure 

 science." Before we advance, however, any special 

 claim for the pursuit of science based on these con- 

 siderations, we must pause to think whether they do 

 not equally apply to other studies or occupations. For 

 this purpose, the nature of the aesthetic enjoyment in- 

 volved must be remembered. We do not mean by 

 it, the pleasure we feel in the mere contemplation of 

 an impressive landscape or natural beauty, but it 

 resembles more the enjoyment experienced on looking 

 at a picture where, apart from the sensual pleasure 

 we are affected by the relation between the result of 

 the representation and that which is represented. The 

 picture, quite apart from what it may be trying to 

 imitate, has a certain beauty due to its contrast of 

 colours or well-balanced arrangement. We have in 

 one case a number of pigments covering a space of 

 two dimensions, and in the other the natural object 

 in three dimensions made up of entirely different 

 materials and showing an infinite variety of detail and 

 appearance. By itself alone either a mere photo- 

 graphic representation, or a geometrical arrangement 

 of colour and line, leaves most of us cold ; though both 

 have their own particular beauty, the art consists in 

 bringing them into connection. Bearing in mind the 

 aesthetic value of the relationship of the work of our 

 brain or hand to external facts or appearances, it might 

 easily be shown that what has been said of science 

 equally applies to other studies, such as history or 

 literature. We may even go further, and say that 

 any occupation whatever, from which we can derive 

 an intellectual pleasure, must possess to a greater or 

 smaller degree the elements oif combining the useful 

 with the beautiful. 



In order to trace in detail the part played by purely 

 emotional instincts in directing the course of our 

 lives, we should have to study the causes which in- 

 fluence a child, free to select his future profession. 

 Having eliminated secondary efTorts, such as early 

 associations, or the personal influence of an inspiring 



NO. 2393, VOL. 96] 



teacher, we should probably be brought to a stand- 

 still by the dearth' of material at our disposal, or led 

 into error by taking our own individual recollections 

 as typical. Nevertheless it is only through the record 

 of each man's experience that we may hope to arrive 

 at a result. If every man who has reached a certain 

 recognised position in his own subject — it need not 

 be pre-eminence — would write down his own recollec- 

 tions of what led him to make the choice of his pro- 

 fession, we might hope to obtain facts on which a 

 useful psychological study might be based. Scientific 

 men as a class are not modest, but they share with 

 other classes the reluctance to speak of their early 

 life, owing to a certain shyness to disclose early 

 ambitions which have not been realised. It requires 

 courage to overcome that shyness, but I think that we 

 need feel no shame in revealing the dreams of our 

 childhood and holding fast to them despite the bond- 

 age of our weakness, despite the strife ending so 

 often in defeat, despite all the obstacles which the 

 struggle for existence has placed in our path. In 

 some form they should persist throughout our lives 

 and sustain us in our old age. 



But the account of our early life should be simple, 

 detached from any motives of self-depreciation or self- 

 assertion, and free from any desire to push any par- 

 ticular moral or psychological theory. We want to 

 trace the dawn of ambition, the first glimmering in 

 the child's mind that there is something that he can 

 do better than his fellows and reminiscences of early 

 likes and dislikes which, though apparently discon- 

 nected from maturer tendencies, may serve as indica- 

 tions of a deep-seated purpose in life. It may be 

 difficult to resist the temptation of trying to justify 

 one's reputation in the eyes of the world; but it is 

 worth making the effort. The only example that I 

 know of such an autobiographical sketch is that of 

 Darwin, which is contained in his "Life and Letters," 

 published by his son. Sir Francis Darwin. 



The ambition of a child to be better, cleverer, or 

 more beautiful than its fellows is in the main, I 

 think, a wish to please and to be praised. As the 

 child grows up, the ambition becomes more definite. 

 It is not a sordid ambition for ultimate wealth or 

 power, nor is it an altruistic ambition to do good for 

 the sake of doing good. Occasionally it takes the 

 form confessed to by Darwin, when he says: "As a 

 child I was much given to inventing deliberate false- 

 hoods, and this was always done for the sake of 

 causing excitement." This desire to be conspicuous, 

 was, in Darwin's case, consistent with extreme 

 modesty, amounting almost to a want of confidence 

 in himself, as appears in this passage : " I remember 

 one of my sporting friends. Turner, who saw me at 

 work with my beetles, saying that I should some day 

 be a Fellow of the Royal Society, and this notion 

 seemed to me to be preposterous." 



We next come to the stage where a child is attracted 

 by one subject more than another, and, if his choice 

 be free, will select it for his life's career. What guides 

 him in this choice? If it be said that a boy gravi- 

 tates towards that subject which he finds easiest, we 

 are led to the further question, why does he find it 

 easiest? It is on this point that more information 

 is required, but I am inclined to answer in accord- 

 ance with Poincar^'s views that it is because its 

 particular beauty appeals most strongly to his emo- 

 tional senses. In questions of this kind everyone 

 must form his own conclusions according to his per- 

 sonal recollections, and these convince me that the 

 emotional factor appears already at an early age. It 

 is the strong attraction towards particular forms of 

 reasoning, more perhaps even than the facility with 

 which reasoning comes, that carries us over the initial 



