Chapter III: The Art of Thinking (3)

Always, it may perhaps be noted in passing, it seems to have been
difficult for the sober and solemn Northerner, especially of England,
to enter into the Greek spirit, all the more since that spirit was
only the spirit of a sprinkling of people amid a hostile mass about as
unlike anything we conventionally call “Greek” as could well be
imagined, so that, as Élie Faure, the historian of art, has lately
remarked, Greek art is a biological “monstrosity.” (Yet, I would ask,
might we not say the same of France or of England?) That is why it is
usually so irritating to read books written about the Greeks by
barbarians; they slur over or ignore what they do not like and, one
suspects, they instinctively misinterpret what they think they do
like. Better even the most imperfect knowledge of a few original
texts, better even only a few days on the Acropolis, than the
second-hand opinions of other people. And if we must have a book about
the Greeks, there is always Athenæus, much nearer to them in time and
in spirit, with all his gossip, than any Northern barbarian, and an
everlasting delight.

Footnote 33:

Along another line it should have been clear that the dialogues of the
philosophers were drama and not history. It would appear (Croiset,
_Littérature Grecque_, vol. III, pp. 448 _et seq._) that with
Epicharmus of Cos, who was settled in Megara at the beginning of the
fifth century, philosophic comedy flourished brilliantly at Syracuse,
and indeed fragments of his formal philosophic dialogue survive. Thus
it is suggested that Athenian comedy and sophistic prose dialogues may
be regarded as two branches drawn from the ancient prototype of such
Syracusan comedy, itself ultimately derived from Ionian philosophy. It
is worth noting, I might add, that when we first hear of the Platonic
dialogues they were being grouped in trilogies and tetralogies like
the Greek dramas; that indicates, at all events, what their earliest
editors thought about them. It is also interesting to note that the
writer of, at the present moment, the latest handbook to Plato,
Professor A. E. Taylor (_Plato_, 1922, pp. 32-33), regards the
“Socrates” of Plato as no historical figure, not even a mask of Plato
himself, but simply “the hero of the Platonic drama,” of which we have
to approach in much the same way as the work of “a great dramatist or
novelist.”

Footnote 34:

He had often been bidden in dreams to make music, said the Platonic
Socrates in _Phædo_, and he had imagined that that was meant to
encourage him in the pursuit of philosophy, “which is the noblest and
best of music.”

Footnote 35:

In discussing Socrates I have made some use of Professor Dupréel’s
remarkable book, _La Légende Socratique_ (1922). Dupréel himself, with
a little touch of irony, recommends a careful perusal of the beautiful
and monumental works erected by Zeller and Grote and Gomperz to the
honour of Socrates.

Footnote 36:

Count Hermann Keyserling, _Philosophie als Kunst_ (1920), p. 2. He
associates this with the need for a philosophy to possess a subjective
personal character, without which it can have no value, indeed no
content at all.

Footnote 37:

Croce, _Problemi d’ Estetica_, p. 15. I have to admit, for myself,
that, while admiring the calm breadth of Croce’s wide outlook, it is
sometimes my misfortune, in spite of myself, when I go to his works,
to play the part of a Balaam _à rebours_. I go forth to bless: and,
somehow, I curse.

Footnote 38:

James Hinton, a pioneer in so many fields, clearly saw that thinking
is really an art fifty years ago. “Thinking is no mere mechanical
process,” he wrote (_Chapters on the Art of Thinking_, pp. 43 _et
seq._), “it is a great Art, the chief of all the Arts.... Those only
can be called thinkers who have a native gift, a special endowment for
the work, and have been trained, besides, by assiduous culture. And
though we continually assume that every one is capable of thinking, do
we not all feel that there is somehow a fallacy in this assumption? Do
we not feel that what people set up as their ‘reasons’ for
disbelieving or believing are often nothing of the sort?... The Art
faculty is Imagination, the power of seeing the unseen, the power also
of putting ourselves out of the centre, of reducing ourselves to our
true proportions, of truly using our own impressions. And is not this
in reality the chief element in the work of the thinker?... Science
_is_ poetry.”

Footnote 39:

So far, indeed, as I am aware, I was responsible for the first English
account of his work (outside philosophical journals); it appeared in
the London _Nation and Athenæum_ a few years ago, and is partly
embodied in the present chapter.

Footnote 40:

I have based this sketch on an attractive and illuminating account of
his own development written by Professor Vaihinger for Dr. Raymund
Schmidt’s highly valuable series, _Die Deutsche Philosophie der
Gegenwart in Selbstdarstellungen_ (1921), vol. II.

Footnote 41:

“Most workers on the problem of atomic constitution,” remarks Sir
Ernest Rutherford (_Nature_, 5th August, 1922), “take as a working
hypothesis that the atoms of matter are purely electrical structures,
and that ultimately it is hoped to explain all the properties of atoms
as a result of certain combinations of the two fundamental units of
positive and negative electricity, the proton and electron.”

Footnote 42:

Havelock Ellis, _Studies in the Psychology of Sex_, vol. I.

Footnote 43:

Otto Rank, _Der Künstler: Ansätze zu einer Sexual Psychologie_.

Footnote 44:

The sexual strain in the symbolism of language is touched on in my
_Studies in the Psychology of Sex_, vol. V, and similar traits in
primitive legends have been emphasised—many would say
over-emphasised—by Freud and Jung.

Footnote 45:

Einstein, in conversation with Moszkowski, expressed doubt as to the
reality of Leonardo’s previsions of modern science. But it scarcely
appeared that he had investigated the matter, while the definite
testimony of the experts in many fields who have done so cannot be put
aside.

Footnote 46:

For the Italian reader of Leonardo the fat little volume of
_Frammenti_, edited by Dr. Solmi and published by Barbèra, is a
precious and inexhaustible pocket companion. For the English reader
Mr. MacCurdy’s larger but much less extensive volume of extracts from
the _Note-Books_, or the still further abridged _Thoughts_, must
suffice. Herbert Horne’s annotated version of Vasari’s _Life_ is
excellent for Leonardo’s personality and career.

Footnote 47:

Morley Roberts, who might be regarded as a pupil in the school of
Leonardo and trained like him in the field of art, has in various
places of his suggestive book, _Warfare in the Human Body_, sprinkled
irony over the examples he has come across of ignorant specialists
claiming to be men of “science.”

Footnote 48:

Needless to say, I do not mention this to belittle Galton. A careful
attention to words, which in its extreme form becomes pedantry, is by
no means necessarily associated with a careful attention to things.
Until recent times English writers, even the greatest, were always
negligent in spelling; it would be foolish to suppose they were
therefore negligent in thinking.

Footnote 49:

Darwin even overestimated the æsthetic element in his theory of sexual
selection, and (I have had occasion elsewhere to point out)
unnecessarily prejudiced that theory by sometimes unwarily assuming a
conscious æsthetic element.

Footnote 50:

It is probable that the reason why it is often difficult to trace the
imaginative artist in great men of supposedly abstract science is the
paucity of intimate information about them. Even their scientific
friends have rarely had the patience, or even perhaps the
intelligence, to observe them reverently and to record their
observations. We know almost nothing that is intimately personal about
Newton. As regards Einstein, we are fortunate in possessing the book
of Moszkowski, _Einstein_ (translated into English under the title of
_Einstein the Searcher_), which contains many instructive
conversations and observations by a highly intelligent and
appreciative admirer, who has set them down in a Boswellian spirit
that faintly recalls Eckermann’s book on Goethe (which, indeed,
Moszkowski had in mind), though falling far short of that supreme
achievement. The statements in the text are mainly gleaned from
Moszkowski.

Footnote 51:

Spengler holds (_Der Untergang des Abendlandes_, vol. X, p. 329) that
the development of music throughout its various stages in our European
culture really has been closely related with the stages of the
development of mathematics.

Footnote 52:

I would here refer to a searching investigation, “Goethe und die
mathematische Physik: Eine Erkenntnistheoretische Studie,” in Ernst
Cassirer’s _Idee und Gestalt_ (1921). It is here shown that in some
respects Goethe pointed the way along which mathematical physics, by
following its own paths, has since travelled, and that even when most
non-mathematical Goethe’s scientific attitude was justifiable.

Footnote 53:

See the remarkable essay, “De la Cinéplastique,” in Élie Faure’s
_L’Arbre d’Éden_ (1922). It is, however, a future and regenerated
cinema for which Élie Faure looks, “to become the art of the crowd,
the powerful centre of communion in which new symphonic forms will be
born in the tumult of passions and utilized for fine and elevating
æsthetic ends.”

Footnote 54:

O. Spengler, _Der Untergang des Abendlandes_, vol. I, p. 576.