|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 19
Here is the peculiar perfection of tone and truth in the
nursery tales. The man of science says, "Cut the stalk, and the apple
will fall"; but he says it calmly, as if the one idea really led up
to the other. The witch in the fairy tale says, "Blow the horn,
and the ogre's castle will fall"; but she does not say it as if it
were something in which the effect obviously arose out of the cause.
Doubtless she has given the advice to many champions, and has seen many
castles fall, but she does not lose either her wonder or her reason.
She does not muddle her head until it imagines a necessary mental
connection between a horn and a falling tower. But the scientific
men do muddle their heads, until they imagine a necessary mental
connection between an apple leaving the tree and an apple reaching
the ground. They do really talk as if they had found not only
a set of marvellous facts, but a truth connecting those facts.
They do talk as if the connection of two strange things physically
connected them philosophically. They feel that because one
incomprehensible thing constantly follows another incomprehensible
thing the two together somehow make up a comprehensible thing.
Two black riddles make a white answer.
In fairyland we avoid the word "law"; but in the land of science
they are singularly fond of it. Thus they will call some interesting
conjecture about how forgotten folks pronounced the alphabet,
Grimm's Law. But Grimm's Law is far less intellectual than
Grimm's Fairy Tales. The tales are, at any rate, certainly tales;
while the law is not a law. A law implies that we know the nature
of the generalisation and enactment; not merely that we have noticed
some of the effects. If there is a law that pick-pockets shall go
to prison, it implies that there is an imaginable mental connection
between the idea of prison and the idea of picking pockets.
And we know what the idea is. We can say why we take liberty
from a man who takes liberties. But we cannot say why an egg can
turn into a chicken any more than we can say why a bear could turn
into a fairy prince. As IDEAS, the egg and the chicken are further
off from each other than the bear and the prince; for no egg in
itself suggests a chicken, whereas some princes do suggest bears.
Granted, then, that certain transformations do happen, it is essential
that we should regard them in the philosophic manner of fairy tales,
not in the unphilosophic manner of science and the "Laws of Nature."
When we are asked why eggs turn to birds or fruits fall in autumn,
we must answer exactly as the fairy godmother would answer
if Cinderella asked her why mice turned to horses or her clothes
fell from her at twelve o'clock. We must answer that it is MAGIC.
It is not a "law," for we do not understand its general formula.
It is not a necessity, for though we can count on it happening
practically, we have no right to say that it must always happen.
It is no argument for unalterable law (as Huxley fancied) that we
count on the ordinary course of things. We do not count on it;
we bet on it. We risk the remote possibility of a miracle as we
do that of a poisoned pancake or a world-destroying comet.
We leave it out of account, not because it is a miracle, and therefore
an impossibility, but because it is a miracle, and therefore
an exception. All the terms used in the science books, "law,"
"necessity," "order," "tendency," and so on, are really unintellectual,
because they assume an inner synthesis, which we do not possess.
The only words that ever satisfied me as describing Nature are the
terms used in the fairy books, "charm," "spell," "enchantment."
They express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery.
A tree grows fruit because it is a MAGIC tree. Water runs downhill
because it is bewitched. The sun shines because it is bewitched.
I deny altogether that this is fantastic or even mystical.
We may have some mysticism later on; but this fairy-tale language
about things is simply rational and agnostic. It is the only way
I can express in words my clear and definite perception that one
thing is quite distinct from another; that there is no logical
connection between flying and laying eggs. It is the man who
talks about "a law" that he has never seen who is the mystic.
Nay, the ordinary scientific man is strictly a sentimentalist.
He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense, that he is soaked
and swept away by mere associations. He has so often seen birds
fly and lay eggs that he feels as if there must be some dreamy,
tender connection between the two ideas, whereas there is none.
A forlorn lover might be unable to dissociate the moon from lost love;
so the materialist is unable to dissociate the moon from the tide.
In both cases there is no connection, except that one has seen
them together. A sentimentalist might shed tears at the smell
of apple-blossom, because, by a dark association of his own,
it reminded him of his boyhood. So the materialist professor (though
he conceals his tears) is yet a sentimentalist, because, by a dark
association of his own, apple-blossoms remind him of apples. But the
cool rationalist from fairyland does not see why, in the abstract,
the apple tree should not grow crimson tulips; it sometimes does in
his country.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|