"Olaf Stapledon - Rare stories" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stapledon Olaf)

as a stable attitude appropriate to all that we know of reality. And this is to be achieved only in the
direction of the second and more rare mood of the modem spirit, namely that disinterested admiration
which enlightens our disillusion and perplexes our intelligence.
For the modem kind of religious experience, or if it be preferred the modem substitute for religious
experience, is itself the unexpected outcome of disillusion. Only by way of despair and a subsequent
detachment can we attain this experience in its purity, and distinguish it from the mere conviction that
the heavens care for us. Only when we have countenanced the defeat and even ridicule of the whole
enterprise of life upon this planet can we discover that unique splendour and perfection of existence
which is more admirable even than life's victory. And because this discovery, coming as it does in the
very trough of our disillusion, cannot be assimilated by a pessimistic view, it should perplex us, and
should indeed start a ferment of the whole mind.
We may understand our case more clearly by considering the movements of thought that have led up to
it. Professor Whitehead has described the conflict between materialistic science and romantic literature,
which came to a head in the nineteenth century and resulted in the defeat of romance. The whole
romantic movement, he says, was a protest on behalf of the organic view of nature and on behalf of
value, a revolt against the unjustified metaphysical dogmas of a science which ever tended to ignore its
own abstractness. The poets concerned themselves with these more subtle or more "spiritual" factors in
our experience which the science of that day, though it rightly neglected them for its own purposes, had
no right to deny metaphysically. But the gesture of the poets was doomed to failure. Expressions of faith
or mere longing carried less weight than the precise demonstrations and brilliantly plausible guesses of
the scientists. The wind set in the direction of materialism; the whole mental climate had changed. Even
the romantics themselves found their vision blurred by a flood of argument and non-rational suggestion.
In the early stage Wordsworth had been able to dismiss science with a contemptuous phrase, and to
salute "the brooding presence of the hills" without suspicion that it was illusory. But later Tennyson was
compelled to recognise the forcefulness of materialistic metaphysics, though finally he sought
consolation in an impotent reiteration of faith. Professor Whitehead might have added that Browning,

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with more complacency, but perhaps less intelligence, missed the issue altogether and merely
proclaimed his confidence that human individuals were too interesting to be scrapped at death; while
Carlyle, in spite of his grim concentration, found no better solution for the problem than to condemn
doubt as cowardly and bid the doubter act so vigorously that he should have no time for thought.
Professor Whitehead's theme is important; but certain equally important comments should be made. And
first we must ask, had the romantic poets actually seized a truth which the scientists had missed, or were
they merely expressing the fulfilment of their own longing? The answer would seem to be that the poets
had indeed in a sense a truth which the scientists missed, but that the scientists also had a truth which the
poets had missed, and that these two truths did not in fact conflict at all. The conflict was merely
between two unsupported metaphysics, materialistic metaphysics and romantic metaphysics. The
scientists, ignoring all the more difficult aspects of experience, were so enthralled by their admirable
system of abstractions that they assumed universal materialism and neglected value. The poets, on the
other hand, apprehending by direct acquaintance certain superior values, assumed that these values
implied a romantic metaphysics. Quite illogically it was inferred that because nature was experienced as
a brooding presence, because man could distinguish between good and evil and could espouse the good,
and because the universe calls forth our admiration, therefore at the heart of reality there must be
sympathy for man and advocacy of his most cherished ends.
Professor Whitehead has used the romantic movement to expose the insufficiency of nineteenth-century
science and to support his organic view of nature; but, had he wished, he might equally well have used
the whole movement of scientific interest to expose the incompleteness of the romantic ideal. If