And secondly, thanks to the importance science and art now attribute to themselves, we have a very clear standard set by science itself, by which to determine whether or not they fulfil their purpose, and so to decide not arbitrarily but according to an accepted standard, whether the activity calling itself science and art has a right to do so.
When Egyptian and Grecian priests performed mysteries which were concealed from everybody, and said that these mysteries contained all science and all art-we could not on the score of benefits conferred by them on the people verify the validity of their science, for they alleged it to be super-natural; but now we all have a very clear and simple standard excluding everything supernatural: science and art undertake to perform the brain-work of humanity for the benefit of society or of mankind. And therefore we have a right to call only such activity ‘science and art’ as has that aim in view and attains it.
And therefore, however those learned men and artists call themselves who excogitate the theory of penal, civil, and international law, who invent new guns and explosives, who compose obscene operas and operettas or similarly obscene novels, we have no right to call such activity science and art; for that activity has not the welfare of society or of mankind in view, but is on the contrary directed to the injury of man.
All this therefore is not science or art. In the same way, however learned men may call themselves who in their simplicity devote their whole lives to the study of microscopic animalculae and of telescopic and spectral phenomena, or those artists who after a laborious study of the memorials of antiquity are busy writing historical novels, painting pictures, or composing symphonies and beautiful verses all these men, despite their zeal, cannot, on the basis of the scientific definition itself, be called men of science and art: first, because their activity of science for science’s sake and art for art’s sake has not human welfare in view; and secondly, because we do not see the results of their activity in the welfare of society and of humanity. The fact that from their activity something pleasant and profitable for certain people sometimes results, by no means allows us, according to their own scientific definition, to consider them scientists and artists.
Just in the same way, however people may call themselves who devise applications of electricity to lighting or heating or the transmission of power, or new chemical combinations yielding dynamite or fine colours, or play Beethoven’s symphonies correctly, or perform in theatres and paint good portraits, genre paintings, landscapes or other pictures, or write interesting novels-the aim of which is merely to relieve the dullness of the wealthy classes-these people’s activity cannot be called science and art, because it is not directed, like the brain-activity of an organism, to the welfare of the whole, but is guided merely by personal profit, privileges, and money, received for the inventions and productions of so-called art; and therefore this activity can in no way be separated from every other kind of interested personal activity adding to the pleasure of life, like the activity of restaurant-keepers, jockeys, milliners, prostitutes, and so forth; for the activity of the first, the second, and the third, of these does not come under the definition of science and art which promise on the basis of a division of labour to serve the welfare of mankind or of society.
The definition of science and art given by science is quite correct, but unfortunately the activity of present-day science and art does not come under it. Some of its representatives are doing what is directly harmful, others what is useless, and again others what is insignificant and available only for rich people.
They, are all perhaps very good people, but they do not do what by their own definition they have undertaken to do, and therefore they have as little right to consider themselves scientists and artists as the clergy of to-day, who do not fulfil the duties they have undertaken, have a right to claim to be the bearers and teachers of divine truth.
And it is not difficult to understand why those who are active in science and art to-day do not fulfil, and cannot fulfil, their calling. They do not fulfil it because they have converted their duties into rights.
Scientific and artistic activity in its real sense is only fruitful when it ignores rights and knows only duties. Only because it is always of that kind and its nature is to be self-sacrificing, does humanity value this activity so highly.
Men who are really called to serve others by mental labour will always suffer in performing that service, for only by sufferings as by birth pangs, is the spiritual world brought to birth.
Self-sacrifice and suffering will be the lot of a thinker and an artist because their aim is the welfare of man. People are unhappy, they suffer and perish. There is no time to wait and refresh oneself.
The thinker and artist will never sit on Olympian heights as we are apt to imagine; he will always be in a state of anxiety and agitation; he might discover and utter what would bring blessings to people, might save them from sufferings, but he has not discovered it and has not uttered it, and to-morrow it may be too late-he may have died.
Not that man will be a thinker and artist who is educated in an institution where they profess to produce learned men and artists (but really produce destroyers of science and art) and who obtains a diploma and a competence, but he who would be glad not to think and not to express what is implanted in his soul, but cannot help doing what he is impelled to by two irresistible forces-an inner necessity and the demands of men.
Plump self-satisfied thinkers and artists, enjoying themselves, do not exist.
Mental activity and its expression, of a kind really needed by others, is the hardest and most painful calling for a man-his cross, as the Gospel expresses it. And the sole and indubitable indication of a man’s vocation for it is self-denial, a sacrifice of himself for the manifestation of the power implanted in him for the benefit of others.
One can teach how many insects there are in the world and examine the spots on the sun and write novels and operas, without suffering; but to teach men their welfare, which lies in denying oneself and serving others, and to express this teaching powerfully, is impossible without suffering.
The church existed as long as its teachers endured and suffered, but as soon as they became fat their teaching activity ended.
‘There used to be golden priests and wooden chalices; but now the chalices are golden and priests wooden,’ as the peasants say.
There was reason for Christ to die on the cross: the sacrifice of suffering conquers all.
Our science and art are provided for and diplomaed and people are only concerned how to provide for them still better, that is, make it impossible for them to serve mankind.
True science and true art have two indubitable indications: the first internal-that a minister of science or art fulfils his calling not for gain but with self-sacrifice; and the second external-that his productions are intelligible to all men whose welfare he has in view.
Whatever it may be that men regard as representing their vocation and welfare, science will teach that vocation and welfare, and art will express that teaching. The laws of Solon and Confucius are science; the teachings of Moses and of Christ are science; buildings in Athens, the psalms of David, the church service, are art; but studying the fourth dimension of matter and tabulating chemical compounds and so forth-never has been and never will be science.
The place of real science is occupied in our time by theology and jurisprudence, and the place of real art is occupied by church and state ceremonies, in neither of which do people believe and which no one regards seriously; but what among us is called science and art is a production of idle thought and feeling which aims at tickling similarly idle minds and feelings, and it is unintelligible and inarticulate to the people because it has not their welfare in view.
From the time we know anything of the life of man we everywhere and always find a dominant teaching falsely calling itself science, and not revealing to people, but concealing from them, the meaning of life. So it was among the Egyptians, the Hindus, the Chinese, and to some extent among the Greeks (the sophists), and later among the mystics, gnostics, and cabalists, and in the Middle Ages among the schoolmen and alchemists, and so on, everywhere, down to our own day.
What peculiar luck is ours that we live just at the particular time when the mental activity calling itself science not only does not err, but is (as we are constantly assured) extraordinarily successful! Does not this peculiarly good fortune result from the fact that man cannot and will not recognize his own deformity? How is it that of those
