Science and Art科学和艺术
I beg leave to thank you for the extremely kind and apprieciative manner in which you have received the toast of science. It is the more grateful to me to hear that toast proposed in an assembly of this kind. Because I have noticed of late years a great and growing tendency among those who were once jestingly said to have been born pre-scientific age to look upon science as an invading and aggressive force, which if it had find its own way, it would oust from the universe all other pursuits. I think there are mang persons who look upon the new birth of our times as a sort of monster rising out of the sea of modern thought with the purpose of devouring thd Andromeda of art. And now and then a Perseus, equipped with the shoes of swiftness of the ready writer, and with the cap of invisibility of the editorial article,and it may be with the Medusahead of vituperation, shows herself ready to try conclusions with the scientific dragon. Sir, I hope that Perseus should think better of it. First, for the sake of his own, because the creature is hard of head, strong of jaw, for some time past has shown a great capacity for going over and through whatever comes in his way; and secondly, for the sake of justice, for I assure you, of my own personal knowledge if left alone, the creature is a very debonair and gentle monster. As for the Andromeda of art, the creatrue has the tenderest respect for the lady, and desires nothing more than to see her happily settled and annually pruducing a flock of such charming children as those we see about us.
But putting parables aside, I am unable to understand how any one with a knowledge of mankind can imagine that the growth of science can threaten the development of art in any of its forms. If I understand the matter at all, science and art are the obverse and reverse of the Nature's medal;the one expressing the external order of things, in terms of feeling , and the other in terms of thought. When men no longer love nor hate; when suffering causes no pity, and the tale of great deeds ceases to thrill, when the lily of the field shall seem no longer more beautifully arrayed than the Solomon in all his glory, and the owe has vanished from the snow-capped peak and deep ravine, and indeed the science may have the world to itself, but it will not be because the monster has devoured the art, but because one side of human nature is dead, and because men have lost half of their ancient and present attributes. |