Science and the Intellect : Part 4

Heart and Soul by Maveric Post
by Victor Mapes

(Page 9 of 19)

It also takes a certain amount of time for great changes to permeate, and become absorbed by masses of people, so that it should not seem strange if many of the indirect results have only begun to be noticeable within the past few years.

And now if we look about and pause to reflect on these triumphs of modern science, as they affect the life and ideas and feelings of the average individual, a very curious and somewhat startling question is liable to suggest itself.

Is it possible that right here may be the main and underlying cause of the so-called "demoralization" of the present generation? Is it possible that the "impossible notions" and the equally "impossible conduct" of the up-to-date young people which grandmother finds so shocking are traceable to this source? Is it possible that faith, honor, loyalty and other ideals and aspirations of man's better nature, are being neglected and corrupted by the methods of modern science and the rule of reason?

The very idea of such a possibility, when it first dawned upon me, seemed like such a palpable absurdity that I put it aside, yet as I followed the other trains of thought which have been under discussion, this idea kept recurring with greater and greater persistency. If it happened to be true, the lesson to be derived from it might prove so important and helpful to struggling humanity, that it appears to me, now, entitled to careful consideration.

Let us begin with a general commentary and ask ourselves - How comes it, while scientific methods have achieved such amazing results in the material world, they have not succeeded equally well in improving the inner nature of man? How comes it that science, with all its investigations and accurately reasoned conclusions, cannot show the individuals of the present day how to make better paintings than Raphael or Titian? Or better statues than Michael Angelo? Or better music than Chopin or Wagner? Or better literature than Moliere or Shakespeare?

It can show him how to make a hundred times better ship, or factory, or surgical operation; but when it comes to this other kind of thing, it appears to have made no improvement at all. Those artists we have named and hundreds of others in past centuries, who made immortal masterpieces, had no intellects enlightened by modern science, nor any of the benefits of modern education and progress. If we may judge at all by results (which is the modern, enlightened way), the only effect of science in teaching people how to get an inspiration and find a beautiful expression for it, has been a detriment rather than a help.

If you take a boy to-day, who has a natural bent for poetry, or painting, how much will you help him by filling his mind with scientific methods and theories, rules and exceptions, deductions and compilations, of the various elements which should logically determine the value of the finished product? By giving his intellect a thorough course in scientific training, which may occupy his time and absorb his energy for many years, is it not possible that you will turn out in the end a plodding hack, instead of the inspired artist who might have been?

Did anybody ever feel the poetic beauty of a rose with greater intensity for having examined its petals through a microscope, and learned to classify it scientifically, both as to species and variety?

Did anybody ever learn by scientific rules of grammar and classified tables of words, to speak a foreign language with the ease and charm of a child, who picks it up from a stupid governess in one-tenth the time? The childlike, natural way to learn a language is to absorb it into the system, almost without effort, until it becomes a part of second nature - in much the same way that we absorb tunes. Without the slightest conscious effort, we are absorbing and retaining countless bars of music, all through our lives - yet can anybody imagine an enlightened intellect, undertaking to analyze and classify with scientific method the use of sharps and flats in different kinds of bars, and attempting to learn them in that form?

Homer's Iliad and Virgil's Æneid are generally regarded as great masterpieces of literature. They are full of poetic feeling, imagination, charm and inspiring sentiments. They are still being read by thousands of boys and girls, every year, but they are being read to the accompaniment of grammars, lexicons, and the commentary of learned professors, upon roots, derivatives and obsolete usages. A vast amount of time and energy is devoted to this undertaking, which is usually justified on the ground that it affords excellent training for the intellect. But how about the feelings of admiration and enthusiasm which works of such great beauty were intended to inspire? Are they exercised to the same extent? Or is the tendency rather to trammel and divert them by so much laborious and irrelevant interference?

When we turn to the more personal feelings of the individual, in his intimate relations with other beings, is not the situation much the same? Has scientific thought discovered, or devised, any means of increasing the warmth and tenderness of the human heart? Has the rule of reason made husbands and wives any more devoted to each other, or to their friends? It has succeeded in providing a great many people with a telephone and an automobile, but has it succeeded equally well in providing them with generous feelings of self-denial and consideration for others? Or has its tendency, on the contrary, been rather to interfere with the spontaneous development of such feelings, by attempting to replace them by an analysis of human motives in which calculations of self-interest are made the prime factor?

But it is only when we come to the spiritual feelings that the really radical effects of science upon man's nature are encountered. And the method of these changes is so eminently "reasonable," as to be almost self-explanatory.

Copyright 1921 by The Century Co.