A friend of mine wrote to me the other day that the 'sceptre has passed from literature to science. He is of course a man of science himself. And it seemed rather strange that he should use such a very literary phrase to express his triumph. It would have been more appropriate if he sent me an equation. I should not have known what the equation meant. Perhaps that was the reason why he sent me a metaphor instead.
While I pondered his phrase it began to look to me like a barefaced contradiction in terms and I wondered what kind of an equation would adequately express his satisfaction that literature had at last to play second fiddle to science. Even if an equation could be discovered with the proper nuance of ‘I told you so’ what would be the pleasure for him I did not appreciate it? No enemy is stronger than one who does not know he is beaten. And, to compare large things with small, would not the effect upon literature of the victory of science be precisely the same as the effect upon me of defeat by an equation I could not understand? Literature may be shorn of its purple, but if there is no little boy to call out that the Emperor is naked, who will be the wiser? If nobody knows who will care.
Nevertheless, since my friend is a brilliant man, I have done my utmost to extract a meaning from his phrase. I am sure that he means something more than to make my flesh creep. My flesh refuses to creep, but I want to know what he means. I suspect that his metaphor was badly chosen, and that he would have done better with two sceptres instead of one. Probably he meant that literature and science each had a sceptre, but the sceptre of science had of late become heavier and more imposing than the sceptre of literature. Literature now rules a little kingdom while science rules a big one. But the kingdom of literature has certainly, not been incorporated into the kingdom of science, nor is it likely to be. You might as well as try Boyle's law to a bookcase.
But even if we take my friend to mean that science has now become a more important activity of the human mind than literature, is he saying more than that Boyle's law is more valuable than a bookcase? And is not that a judgement without import as the logicians say? Is he not like a man who insists on comparing the values of logarithms and love? And if we suppose he means only that at the present time abler minds are engaged in scientific discovery than in literary creation - a question exceedingly difficult to judge - the issue is not affected. Quite possibly our bridges are better built than our poems nowadays. As Socrates would have said our bridges have more of the goodness of bridges than our poems have the goodness of poems. But that does not mean that a bridge is more important than a poem, or poem than a bridge.
I suspect that what my friend has in his head is that the Einstein theory is discovery of supreme philosophical importance; and that this will have a determining influence upon the future evolution of literature.
It is quite true that scientific theory does have an influence upon literary creation. But it has to be translated into emotional terms. In order to effect literature it has to effect our attitude to life. The theory of Natural Selection, emotionally interpreted as handing man over to the play of blind and uncontrollable forces, certainly gave a pessimistic tinge to the literature of the nineteenth century. The Copernican Revolution no doubt contributed to that emphatic isolation of the individual which is the beginning of modern romanticism; but we cannot say that the literature of the nineteenth century is either more or less important than Darwinism or the Copernican Revolution. There is no means of comparing them. What we can say is that the literature may wear better. Even those two scientific theories have been exploded, as we are told they are being exploded now, the great books created by minds coloured by them will remain fresh and valuable as ever.
For the truth of the matter surely is that there are very few emotional attitudes towards life which a man can truly and instinctively hold. He may believe life is painful, and he may believe it is glorious and splendid; he may confidently hope, he may continually despair; he may alternate between hope and despair. What his attitude will be, is determined by many things, heredity, his personal destiny, and to some degree by the scientific theories that obtain in his lifetime. A scientific theory which directly affects his hope of long life of immortality is better thing to colour his mind and gives a twist to his sensibility. He becomes, if he is a writer, differently interested in life. In so far as either the Einstein theory or the modern biology opens up new vistas of the significance of duration of human life, they will determine a change of tone in literature. Possibly the pessimism which still hangs about us like a cloud will be dissipated for a season. But it will return simply because it is an eternal mode of the human spirit. And it may be dispelled without the cleansing wind of science, because optimism also is a natural mode of the human spirit.
Literature changes tone in obedience to these modes. But its substance is unchanged for that is based on a delighted interest in human life and destinies. Science has no power over that interest; which is a gift of gods like the genius of communicating it. When the man of science has power to determine or to change the structure of our minds, then literature may begin to fear him. By that time ordinary men will bear him also and there will be a massacre of biologists. But till that day science can do more to literature than to help to decide whether its vision of life shall be tinged with pity or happiness, resignation or confidence.
This may equally be decided by the indifference of the writer's mistress' or his happiness in love. Science is only one of the things which colour the glass through which the writer looks at life; at present it can neither give nor take away the gift of seeing clearly through the glass; neither can it increase nor diminish the pressure of those who take delight in what the writer can show them. The sceptre of science may be the more majestic. Besides its massy steel, the rod of literature may appear slight and slender. We do not expect a magician's wand to look otherwise.
