1

:

realm of invention. "Almost every one of the original modern inventions," he says, "and a large proportion also of those supplemental improvements which have followed in the track of the principal, have been the offspring of minds which were untrained in the professions-undisciplineduntaught; or to say all in a word . . . it is laymen who have placed the nineteenth century so far in advance of its predecessors." Then follows a rather surprising list of achievements due to lay originality and Taylor devoted a special chapter to lay theologians, so many and so distinctive were they. It is like the old division between the classic and the romantic: the mind of the professional man is held down by rule, and precedent, and ideal; the mind of the layman, on the other hand, has a freedom which, even if it sometimes results in ridiculous mistakes, is nevertheless a type of intellect we cannot afford to do without; indeed we owe more to it than we can possibly state. Without undervaluing the professional mind or over-estimating the lay mind, we may embody the truth in such a phrase as this: that both types of mind are necessary, but no element of exactitude, of conservatism, or of experience, no rule or regulation, is so important as the freedom which allows the intellect sufficient impulse to discover new principles.

1 Chapter on "Modern Advancements," in his Ultimate Civilisation, P. 193.

1860.

SECTION V

LOOKING AHEAD

CHAPTER I

IS ORIGINALITY NOW IMPOSSIBLE?

I

THE possibility of further originalities of every kind is bound up with the larger question of progress; consequently it is difficult to discuss the one apart from the other. If there be no such thing as progress there can be no originality worthy of the name. Assuming that progress is any kind of change that brings advantage, external or internal, it would be difficult to deny the existence of such changes, just as it would be futile to deny that there have been changes leading to deterioration and disaster. Unless we are to abolish all the distinctions which thought and experience have set up, it is impossible to read the record of history without acknowledging the existence of a plan of operation governed by laws as certain as those of inanimate nature; nor can we intelligently deny that the changes which have taken place are such as to justify the use of the word advance.

By the practical man the question is looked upon as absurd. To him every new development is an originality, and therefore a part of the great scheme of progress. He is very certain about most things, and this is no exception. He knows what he has read and what he has seen. Some years

ago he went to a motor exhibition and saw one of the first motor cars ever made. He got somebody to set the machinery working, and as the old car shuddered and shook in the early manner he laughed long and loud: the thing was so foolish, so pitiable, so pathetic. Progress? Well-he is angry with

scholars who deny it; indeed he will confute them out of the pages of a notebook he keeps in his office. Here is the first extract:

Sir Henry Savile, one of the most eminent mathematicians of his day (who died in the same year as Shakespeare), closed his career as a Professor at Oxford with the words: "By the grace of God, gentlemen hearers, I have performed my promise. I have redeemed my pledge. I have explained, according to my ability, the definitions, postulates, axioms, and the first eight propositions of the Elements of Euclid. Here, sinking under the weight of years, I lay down my art and my instruments."

"Have we made no progress since then?" he asks gleefully. "Or since this?" and he reads another quotation :

Pope Alexander VI. once divided the unexplored portions of the globe between the Spaniards and the Portuguese as the two controlling nations of the earth.

"How about Europe now?" he exclaims.

1

Well, the practical man has to yield a point or two during cross-examination, but he has more to say for himself than philosophers have hitherto allowed. For instance, Professor Münsterberg says that when a man of science speaks of progress and development he thinks of the transition from an acorn to a tree; but that, to be consistent, he must acknowledge that there would be nothing worse and nothing better if the transition should be from the organism to the lifeless and from the cosmos to chaos. The practical man, unaccustomed to this kind of thinking, and believing that it is subversive of experience in the actuality of which the Professor himself reposes his daily life, imagines a reply; and he has been known to construct an argument in a manner rude, rough, but strenuous. He might, for instance, say that if the Professor received a royalty of twenty per cent. on his first book and only ten per cent. on his last, would that be 1 The Eternal Values, p. 11.

"worse" or "better"? Indeed, why receive anything at all if the lifeless is as good as the living? Even the Professor might have to yield a point or two during cross-examination. Whether we are monists, or dualists, or anything else, we have to admit that life on the plane of the real is not the same as that on the plane of the ideal; a truth in thought may not be a truth in action, and philosophies which refuse to take this into account will be as diverting as they are untrue. The Christian Scientist denies the reality of matter, but he knows the right change out of a five-dollar note.

II

But let us return to the more direct question of the possibility of originality. The answers given by scholars, philosophers, and historians are by no means unanimous, indeed they form a highly interesting study in evasion, uncertainty, and contradiction; and although at the end of the debate we may range ourselves with the optimists, it will not be because the arguments on the other side have been few or lacking in significance. For instance, there is the well-known criticism of C. H. Pearson in his National Life and Character.

"Certain kinds of poetry have become impossible; `certain others are being rapidly exhausted. Can anyone conceive that an epic poem could be written in this age? . . . The pastoral is doomed. . . . The satire, as Horace and Juvenal, Boileau and Pope fashioned it, has fallen into comparative disuse. . . . Human nature, various as it is, is only capable after all of a certain number of emotions and acts, and these as the topics of an incessant literature are bound after a time to be exhausted. We may say with absolute certainty that certain subjects are never to be taken again. The Tale of Troy, the Wanderings of Odysseus, the vision of Heaven and Hell, as Dante saw it, the theme of Paradise Lost, and the story of Faust are familiar instances. . ." (p. 298).

It would be possible to add a good many testimonies of like character, but we will be content with two which deal