550 BELLES-LETTRES 



starve out all interest in the arts, to the impoverishment of the soul. 

 Already are there examples of men who hold science to be all-suffi- 

 cient and who insist that it has superseded art. Already is it neces- 

 sary to recall Lowell's setting off of "art, whose concern is with the 

 ideal and the potential, from science which is limited by the actual 

 and the positive." Science bids us go so far and no farther, despite 

 the fact that man longs to peer beyond the confines. Vistas closed 

 to science are opened for us by art. Science fails us, if we ask too 

 much; for it can provide no satisfactory explanation of the enigmas 

 of existence. Above all, it tempts us to a hard and fast acceptance of 

 its own formulas, an acceptance as deadening to progress as it is 

 false to the scientific spirit itself. "History warns us," so Huxley 

 declared, "that it is the customary fate of new truths to begin as 

 heresies, and to end as superstitions." 



Ill 



The growth of the scientific spirit is not more evident in the nine- 

 teenth century than the spread of the democratic movement. Demo- 

 cracy in its inner essence means not only the slow broadening down 

 of government until it rests upon the assured foundation of the people 

 as a whole, it signifies also the final disappearance of the feudal 

 organization, of the system of caste, of the privileges which are 

 not founded on justice, of the belief in any superiority conferred by 

 the accident of birth. It starts with the assertion of the equality 

 of all men before the law; and it ends with the right of every man 

 to do his own thinking. Accepting the dignity of human nature, the 

 democratic spirit, in its finer manifestations, is free from intolerance 

 and rich in sympathy, rejoicing to learn how the other half lives. 

 It is increasingly interested in human personality, in spite of the 

 fact that humanity no longer bulks as big in the universe as it did 

 before scientific discovery shattered the ancient assumption that the 

 world had been made for man alone. 



Perhaps, indeed, it is the perception of our own insignificance 

 which is making us cling together more closely and seek to under- 

 stand each other at least, even if we must ever fail to grasp the full 

 import of the cosmic scheme. Whatever the reason, there is no 

 gainsaying the growth of fellow feeling and of a curiosity founded 

 on friendly interest, both of which are revealed far more abund- 

 antly in our later literatures than in the earlier classics. In the 

 austere masterpieces of the Greek drama, for example, we may dis- 

 cover a lack of this warmth of sympathy; and we cannot but suspect 

 a certain aloofness, which is akin to callousness. The cultivated 

 citizens of Athens were supported by slave-labor; but their great 

 dramatic poets cast little light on the life of the slaves or on the sad 

 conditions of their servitude. Something of this narrow chilliness 



