Return of the Angels

THE RETURN OF THE ANGELS

Daily News, March 14th, 1903

I write these remarks with one great hope, that of arousing controversy. It is really a singular matter that amid all the talk of the great work of physical science and its alleged victory over religious dogmatism, no one has noticed what the greatest of all the triumphs of science really was. It was a discovery far greater than that of evolution. It was the discovery, not of a fact, but of a method, the mother of innumerable facts. That method is, of course, what is known in scientific theory as the method of the hypothesis. It can be most clearly and simply conveyed in common language by saying that it is the principle that the best way to see if a coat fits a man is not to measure both of them, but to try it on. It is the replacing of the very slow, logical method of accumulating, point by point, an absolute proof by a rapid, experimental and imaginative method which gives us, long before we can get absolute proof, a very good working belief. I hear, let us say, of a certain theory about the universe. As a trial, I assume it to be true; then, if I discover with a start that, once assumed, it explains the boots on my feet and the nose on my face, that my umbrella has a new and radiant meaning, that my front door suddenly explains itself, that truths about my cat and dog and wife and hat and sideboard crowd upon me all day and everyday, I believe that theory and go on believing it more and more.

On the other hand, if the theory be not true, I may be perfectly certain that ten minutes after I have experimentally assumed it, I shall break my shins over some contradiction. We have buttoned the coat round the world (that rotund and patient old gentleman) and it has split down the back. It is surely quite obvious that this is the method on which we base all our real beliefs and that on this, above all, we base our belief in evolution. Of the thousands of brilliant and elegant persons like ourselves who believe roughly in the Darwinian doctrine, how many are there who know which fossil or skeleton, which parrot’s tail or which cuttle-fish’s stomach, is really believed to be the conclusive example and absolute datum of natural selection? We know scarcely anything of the Darwinian facts that lead to conversion. What we know is much more important: the Darwinian facts that come after conversion. What we know, to use a higher language, are the fruits of the spirit. We know that with this idea once inside our heads a million things become transparent as if a lamp were lit behind them: we see the thing in the dog in the street, in the pear on the wall, in the book of history we are reading, in the baby in the perambulator and in the last news from Borneo. And the fulfilments pour in upon us in so natural and continual a cataract that at last is reached that paradox of the condition which is called belief. We have seen so many evidences of the theory that we have forgotten them all. The theory is so clear to us that we can scarcely even defend it, If we walked up to the nearest rationalist we know and asked him to prove evolution, he would be dazed, like a man asked to defend justice.

Now it ought to be clearly stated at this stage of philosophical development that it is most emphatically by this method of the successful hypothesis, of the theory that justifies itself, that so large a number of the young in this generation have returned to a certain doctrine of the spiritual. What this doctrine is it may be right to state as baldly and as briefly as possible; it is the view that the world, closely examined, does point with an extreme suggestiveness to the existence of a spiritual world, of a world of agencies not apparently produced by matter, capable to some extent of controlling and inspiring, capable to some extent of being known. It ought, I say, to be plainly stated that numbers of us have returned to this belief; and that we have returned to it, not because of this argument or that argument, but because the theory, when it is adopted, works out everywhere; because the coat, when it is tried on, fits in every crease. It ought to be stated because the old rationalists are rightly indignant with us, in so far as they fancy that we base such a tremendous doctrine on a few desperate quibbles; in so far as they fancy, as they do, that we are hanging on to religion by sticks and straws… The return to the spiritual theory rests on none of these things. It rests, like the movement towards evolution, on the fact that the thing works out. We put on the theory like a magic hat and history becomes translucent like a house of glass.

Let us begin at the beginning. A startling and sensational event occurred recently; I allude to the emergence of the creature called man. It is a recent event, cosmically considered; it is, comparatively speaking, only a little too old to have been headlined in the evening papers. The newness, suddenness and utter uniqueness of the rise of man reminds one of Japan in the East; only it is more so… There may be a hundred explanations of this. No sane man would say that it involved a spiritual deduction. But it fits in with it, and fits in with it very well, to suppose that there is another atmosphere of life besides the animal and that this spiritual world irrupted in some way into that creature at the moment. The phenomenon does not prove Religion, but religion explains the Phenomenon. The Phenomenon is quite as solitary as the Incarnation. It can be explained by saying that in a sense it was the Incarnation. Then we go on. There is one thing which the whole human race, without any exception at all, attests. From the dimmest ages and lands, wherever the seed of man is found, it declares this that such an irruption did take place in the beginning, that they or their fathers have had dealings with a darker or more wonderful being. If human evidence means anything at all, this is perhaps the only thing on which we have overwhelming evidence.

We have nearly overwhelming human witness to the necessity of morality; we have quite overwhelming human witness to the reality of the spiritual life. We are ready enough to quote the evidence of all mankind in support of police regulations or the data of ethics; but we think mankind must be talking nonsense when, with one universal shout it cries out to this thing which is older than sin. That Marcus Aurelius and the Red Indians, that Hindu sages and Italian brigands and Mr Spurgeon and Sir William Crookes should all by various roads come to this conclusion, this is an important thing. A more important thing still is that this belief in spirit, so far from being a morbid thing, is held by almost all people who are physically strong and live in the open air. Powerful peasants and farmers six feet high all believe in fairies. Rationalism is a disease of the towns, like the housing problem. All this is, of course, only suggestive, but it is very suggestive. The Phenomenon does not prove Religion; but Religion explains the Phenomenon… We have not returned to the spiritual theory because of this or that triviality—because of a justification of the Fourth Gospel or a rap on the table. We have returned to it because, by the rejection of rationalism, the world becomes suddenly rational.

Return of the Angels

THE RETURN OF THE ANGELS

Daily News, March 14th, 1903

I write these remarks with one great hope, that of arousing controversy. It is really a singular matter that amid all the talk of the great work of physical science and its alleged victory over religious dogmatism, no one has noticed what the greatest of all the triumphs of science really was. It was a discovery far greater than that of evolution. It was the discovery, not of a fact, but of a method, the mother of innumerable facts. That method is, of course, what is known in scientific theory as the method of the hypothesis. It can be most clearly and simply conveyed in common language by saying that it is the principle that the best way to see if a coat fits a man is not to measure both of them, but to try it on. It is the replacing of the very slow, logical method of accumulating, point by point, an absolute proof by a rapid, experimental and imaginative method which gives us, long before we can get absolute proof, a very good working belief. I hear, let us say, of a certain theory about the universe. As a trial, I assume it to be true; then, if I discover with a start that, once assumed, it explains the boots on my feet and the nose on my face, that my umbrella has a new and radiant meaning, that my front door suddenly explains itself, that truths about my cat and dog and wife and hat and sideboard crowd upon me all day and everyday, I believe that theory and go on believing it more and more.

On the other hand, if the theory be not true, I may be perfectly certain that ten minutes after I have experimentally assumed it, I shall break my shins over some contradiction. We have buttoned the coat round the world (that rotund and patient old gentleman) and it has split down the back. It is surely quite obvious that this is the method on which we base all our real beliefs and that on this, above all, we base our belief in evolution. Of the thousands of brilliant and elegant persons like ourselves who believe roughly in the Darwinian doctrine, how many are there who know which fossil or skeleton, which parrot’s tail or which cuttle-fish’s stomach, is really believed to be the conclusive example and absolute datum of natural selection? We know scarcely anything of the Darwinian facts that lead to conversion. What we know is much more important: the Darwinian facts that come after conversion. What we know, to use a higher language, are the fruits of the spirit. We know that with this idea once inside our heads a million things become transparent as if a lamp were lit behind them: we see the thing in the dog in the street, in the pear on the wall, in the book of history we are reading, in the baby in the perambulator and in the last news from Borneo. And the fulfilments pour in upon us in so natural and continual a cataract that at last is reached that paradox of the condition which is called belief. We have seen so many evidences of the theory that we have forgotten them all. The theory is so clear to us that we can scarcely even defend it, If we walked up to the nearest rationalist we know and asked him to prove evolution, he would be dazed, like a man asked to defend justice.

Now it ought to be clearly stated at this stage of philosophical development that it is most emphatically by this method of the successful hypothesis, of the theory that justifies itself, that so large a number of the young in this generation have returned to a certain doctrine of the spiritual. What this doctrine is it may be right to state as baldly and as briefly as possible; it is the view that the world, closely examined, does point with an extreme suggestiveness to the existence of a spiritual world, of a world of agencies not apparently produced by matter, capable to some extent of controlling and inspiring, capable to some extent of being known. It ought, I say, to be plainly stated that numbers of us have returned to this belief; and that we have returned to it, not because of this argument or that argument, but because the theory, when it is adopted, works out everywhere; because the coat, when it is tried on, fits in every crease. It ought to be stated because the old rationalists are rightly indignant with us, in so far as they fancy that we base such a tremendous doctrine on a few desperate quibbles; in so far as they fancy, as they do, that we are hanging on to religion by sticks and straws… The return to the spiritual theory rests on none of these things. It rests, like the movement towards evolution, on the fact that the thing works out. We put on the theory like a magic hat and history becomes translucent like a house of glass.

Il ritorno degli angeli

IL RITORNO DEGLI ANGELI

Daily News, 14 marzo 1903

Scrivo queste osservazioni con una grande speranza, quella di suscitare polemiche. È davvero una cosa singolare che, in mezzo a tutto il gran parlare della grande opera della scienza fisica e della sua presunta vittoria sul dogmatismo religioso, nessuno abbia notato quale sia stato realmente il più grande di tutti i trionfi della scienza. Fu una scoperta assai più grande di quella dell’evoluzione. Fu la scoperta non di un fatto, ma di un metodo, la madre di innumerevoli fatti. Quel metodo è, naturalmente, ciò che nella teoria scientifica è noto come il metodo dell’ipotesi. Lo si può trasmettere nel modo più chiaro e semplice, in linguaggio comune, dicendo che è il principio secondo cui il modo migliore di vedere se una giacca va bene a un uomo non è misurare entrambi, ma provarla addosso. È la sostituzione del metodo logico, assai lento, di accumulare, punto per punto, una prova assoluta con un metodo rapido, sperimentale e immaginativo che ci dà, molto prima che si possa ottenere la prova assoluta, un’ottima convinzione operativa. Sento parlare, poniamo, di una certa teoria sull’universo. A titolo di prova, la assumo per vera; poi, se scopro con un sussulto che, una volta assunta, essa spiega gli stivali ai miei piedi e il naso sul mio volto, che il mio ombrello ha un significato nuovo e radioso, che la mia porta d’ingresso all’improvviso si spiega da sé, che verità sul mio gatto e sul mio cane e su mia moglie e sul mio cappello e sulla mia credenza mi si affollano addosso tutto il giorno e ogni giorno, credo in quella teoria e continuo a crederci sempre di più.

D’altra parte, se la teoria non è vera, posso essere perfettamente certo che dieci minuti dopo averla assunta sperimentalmente mi romperò gli stinchi contro qualche contraddizione. Abbiamo abbottonato la giacca attorno al mondo (quel vecchio signore rotondo e paziente) ed essa si è spaccata sulla schiena. È di certo del tutto evidente che questo è il metodo su cui basiamo tutte le nostre credenze reali e che su questo, soprattutto, basiamo la nostra credenza nell’evoluzione. Delle migliaia di persone brillanti ed eleganti come noi che credono grosso modo nella dottrina darwiniana, quanti sono coloro che sanno quale fossile o quale scheletro, quale coda di pappagallo o quale stomaco di seppia sia realmente ritenuto l’esempio conclusivo e il dato assoluto della selezione naturale? Non sappiamo quasi nulla dei fatti darwiniani che conducono alla conversione. Ciò che sappiamo è molto più importante: i fatti darwiniani che vengono dopo la conversione. Ciò che sappiamo, per usare un linguaggio più alto, sono i frutti dello spirito. Sappiamo che, con questa idea una volta entrata nella nostra testa, un milione di cose diventano trasparenti come se dietro di esse fosse accesa una lampada: vediamo la cosa nel cane per la strada, nella pera sul muro, nel libro di storia che stiamo leggendo, nel bambino nella carrozzina e nelle ultime notizie dal Borneo. E gli adempimenti si riversano su di noi in una cateratta così naturale e continua che alla fine si raggiunge quel paradosso della condizione che è chiamata fede. Abbiamo visto tante prove della teoria da averle dimenticate tutte. La teoria ci è così chiara che a stento riusciamo persino a difenderla. Se ci avvicinassimo al razionalista più vicino che conosciamo e gli chiedessimo di dimostrare l’evoluzione, egli resterebbe sbalordito, come un uomo cui si chieda di difendere la giustizia.

Ora bisognerebbe affermare chiaramente, a questo stadio dello sviluppo filosofico, che è in modo assolutamente enfatico grazie a questo metodo dell’ipotesi riuscita, della teoria che giustifica sé stessa, che un numero così grande di giovani di questa generazione sono tornati a una certa dottrina dello spirituale. Ciò che questa dottrina sia, forse è bene enunciarlo nel modo più crudo e più breve possibile; è l’idea che il mondo, esaminato da vicino, indichi con estrema suggestività l’esistenza di un mondo spirituale, di un mondo di agenti non apparentemente prodotti dalla materia, capaci in una certa misura di controllare e ispirare, capaci in una certa misura di essere conosciuti. Bisognerebbe, dico, affermare chiaramente che numerosi di noi sono tornati a questa credenza; e che vi siamo tornati non a causa di questo o quell’argomento, ma perché la teoria, quando la si adotta, torna dovunque; perché la giacca, quando la si prova, va bene in ogni piega. Bisognerebbe affermarlo perché i vecchi razionalisti sono giustamente indignati con noi, nella misura in cui immaginano che noi fondiamo una dottrina così tremenda su qualche disperato cavillo; nella misura in cui immaginano, come fanno, che ci aggrappiamo alla religione con fuscelli e pagliuzze… Il ritorno alla teoria spirituale non poggia su nessuna di queste cose. Poggia, come il movimento verso l’evoluzione, sul fatto che la cosa torna. Ci mettiamo la teoria come un cappello magico e la storia diventa translucida come una casa di vetro.

Let us begin at the beginning. A startling and sensational event occurred recently; I allude to the emergence of the creature called man. It is a recent event, cosmically considered; it is, comparatively speaking, only a little too old to have been headlined in the evening papers. The newness, suddenness and utter uniqueness of the rise of man reminds one of Japan in the East; only it is more so… There may be a hundred explanations of this. No sane man would say that it involved a spiritual deduction. But it fits in with it, and fits in with it very well, to suppose that there is another atmosphere of life besides the animal and that this spiritual world irrupted in some way into that creature at the moment. The phenomenon does not prove Religion, but religion explains the Phenomenon. The Phenomenon is quite as solitary as the Incarnation. It can be explained by saying that in a sense it was the Incarnation. Then we go on. There is one thing which the whole human race, without any exception at all, attests. From the dimmest ages and lands, wherever the seed of man is found, it declares this that such an irruption did take place in the beginning, that they or their fathers have had dealings with a darker or more wonderful being. If human evidence means anything at all, this is perhaps the only thing on which we have overwhelming evidence.

We have nearly overwhelming human witness to the necessity of morality; we have quite overwhelming human witness to the reality of the spiritual life. We are ready enough to quote the evidence of all mankind in support of police regulations or the data of ethics; but we think mankind must be talking nonsense when, with one universal shout it cries out to this thing which is older than sin. That Marcus Aurelius and the Red Indians, that Hindu sages and Italian brigands and Mr Spurgeon and Sir William Crookes should all by various roads come to this conclusion, this is an important thing. A more important thing still is that this belief in spirit, so far from being a morbid thing, is held by almost all people who are physically strong and live in the open air. Powerful peasants and farmers six feet high all believe in fairies. Rationalism is a disease of the towns, like the housing problem. All this is, of course, only suggestive, but it is very suggestive. The Phenomenon does not prove Religion; but Religion explains the Phenomenon… We have not returned to the spiritual theory because of this or that triviality—because of a justification of the Fourth Gospel or a rap on the table. We have returned to it because, by the rejection of rationalism, the world becomes suddenly rational.

Cominciamo dal principio. Un evento sorprendente e sensazionale è accaduto di recente; alludo alla comparsa della creatura chiamata uomo. È un evento recente, considerato in scala cosmica; è, comparativamente parlando, soltanto un poco troppo antico per essere finito nei titoli dei giornali della sera. La novità, la subitaneità e l’assoluta unicità dell’ascesa dell’uomo ricordano il Giappone in Oriente; solo che qui vale ancor di più… Vi potranno essere cento spiegazioni di questo. Nessun uomo assennato direbbe che ciò comporti una deduzione spirituale. Ma vi si accorda, e vi si accorda assai bene, il supporre che esista un’altra atmosfera di vita oltre a quella animale, e che questo mondo spirituale sia irrotto in qualche modo in quella creatura in quel momento. Il fenomeno non prova la Religione, ma la religione spiega il Fenomeno. Il Fenomeno è tanto solitario quanto l’Incarnazione. Lo si può spiegare dicendo che in un certo senso esso fu l’Incarnazione. Poi proseguiamo. C’è una cosa che l’intera razza umana, senza alcuna eccezione, attesta. Dalle età e dalle terre più remote, ovunque si trovi il seme dell’uomo, esso dichiara questo: che una tale irruzione ebbe luogo al principio, che essi o i loro padri hanno avuto a che fare con un essere più oscuro o più meraviglioso. Se la testimonianza umana significa qualcosa, questa è forse l’unica cosa sulla quale abbiamo una prova schiacciante.

Abbiamo una testimonianza umana quasi schiacciante della necessità della moralità; abbiamo una testimonianza umana del tutto schiacciante della realtà della vita spirituale. Siamo abbastanza pronti a citare la testimonianza di tutta l’umanità a sostegno dei regolamenti di polizia o dei dati dell’etica; ma pensiamo che l’umanità debba dire sciocchezze quando, con un grido universale, invoca questa cosa che è più antica del peccato. Che Marco Aurelio e i Pellerossa, che i saggi indù e i briganti italiani e il signor Spurgeon e Sir William Crookes giungano tutti per varie strade a questa conclusione, ecco una cosa importante. Una cosa ancor più importante è che questa fede nello spirito, lungi dall’essere una cosa morbosa, è tenuta da quasi tutte le persone fisicamente robuste che vivono all’aria aperta. Vigorosi contadini e fittavoli alti sei piedi credono tutti nelle fate. Il razionalismo è una malattia delle città, come il problema degli alloggi. Tutto questo è, s’intende, solo suggestivo, ma è assai suggestivo. Il Fenomeno non prova la Religione; ma la Religione spiega il Fenomeno… Non siamo tornati alla teoria spirituale a causa di questa o quella banalità—per via di una giustificazione del Quarto Vangelo o d’un colpetto sul tavolo. Vi siamo tornati perché, col rigetto del razionalismo, il mondo diventa d’un tratto razionale.