November 12, 1915] 



SCIENCE 



677 



versally and eternally valid system or 

 prototype of law over and above the im- 

 perfect laws and changeful polities of men 

 — a conception and doctrine long familiar 

 in the juristic thought of antiquity, domi- 

 nating, for example, the Antigone of 

 Sophocles, penetrating the Republic and 

 the Laws of Plato, proclaimed by Demos- 

 thenes in the Oration on the Crown, be- 

 coming, largely through the Republic and 

 the Laws of Cicero, the crowning concep- 

 tion of the imperial jurisprudence of 

 Rome, and still holding sway, as I have 

 said, except in the case of our doubting 

 Thomases of the law, who virtually deny 

 our world the existence of any perfection 

 whatever because they can not, so to speak, 

 feel it with the hand, as if they did not 

 know that to suppose an ideal to be tJius 

 realized would be a flat contradiction in 

 terms. 



If we turn for a moment to art and en- 

 quire what has been her relation to the 

 poignant riddle, shall we not thus be going 

 too far afield 1 The answer is certainly no. 

 In (Bternitatem, pingo, said Zeuxis, the 

 Greek painter. "The purpose of art," 

 says John La Farge, "is commemoration." 

 In these two sayings, one of them ancient, 

 the other modern, we have, I think, the evi- 

 dent clue. They do but tell us that art, 

 like the other great enterprises of man, 

 springs from our spirit's coveting of 

 worth that abides. Like theology, like phi- 

 losophy, like jurisprudence, like natural 

 science, too, as I mean to point out further, 

 and like mathematics, art is born of the 

 universal passion for the dignity of things 

 eternal. Her quest, like theirs, has been a 

 search for invariants, for goods that are 

 everlasting. And what has she found? 

 The answer is simple. "The idea of 

 beauty in each species of being," said 

 Joshua Reynolds, "is perfect, invariable, 

 divine." We know that by a faculty of 



imaginative, mystical, idealizing discern- 

 ment there is revealed to us, amid the fleet- 

 ing beauties of Time, the immobile pres- 

 ence of eternal beauty, immutable arche- 

 type and source of the grace and loveli- 

 ness beheld in the shifting scenes of the 

 flowing world of sense. Such, I take it, is 

 art's contribution to our human release 

 from the tyranny of change and the law of 

 death. 



And now what should be said of science ? 

 Not so brief and far less simple would be 

 the task of characterizing or even enu- 

 merating the many things that in the great 

 drama of modern science have been as- 

 signed the role of invariant forms of real- 

 ity or eternal modes of being. It would be 

 necessary to mention first of all, as mo.st 

 imposing of all, our modern form of the 

 ancient doctrine of fate. I mean the reign- 

 ing conception of our universe as an in- 

 finite machine — a powerful conception that 

 more and more fascinates scientific minds 

 even to the point of obsession and accord- 

 ing to which it should be possible, were 

 knowledge sufficiently advanced, to formu- 

 late, in a system of differential equations, 

 the whole of cosmic history from eternity 

 to eternity in minutest detail, not even ex- 

 cluding a skeptic's doubt whether such 

 formulation be theoretically possible nor 

 excluding the conviction, which some minds 

 have, that the doctrine, regarded as an 

 ultimate creed, is an abominable libel 

 against the character of a world where the 

 felt freedom of the human spirit is not an 

 illusion. It would be necessary to men- 

 tion — as next perhaps in order of impres- 

 siveness — another doctrine that is, curi- 

 ously enough, vividly reminiscent of old- 

 time fate. I allude this time to the doe- 

 trine of heredity, a tremendous concep- 

 tion, in accordance with which — as Pro- 

 fessor W. B. Smith has said in his recent 

 powerful address on "Push or Pull?" — 



