Decadence / Henry Sidgwick memorial lecture, 1908

by Arthur James Balfour

I believe this view to be utterly misleading, confounding accident with essence, transient accompaniments with inseparable characteristics. Should we dream of thus judging the other great social forces of which I have spoken? Are we to ignore what religion has done for the world because it has been the fruitful excuse for the narrowest bigotries and the most cruel persecutions? Are we to underrate the worth of politics, because politics may mean no more than the mindless clash of factions, or the barren exchange of one set of tyrants or jobbers for another? Is patriotism to be despised because its manifestations have been sometimes vulgar, sometimes selfish, sometimes brutal, sometimes criminal? Estimates like these seem to me worse than useless. All great social forces are not merely capable of perversion, they are constantly perverted. Yet were they eliminated from our social system, were each man, acting on the advice, which Voltaire gave but never followed, to disinterest himself of all that goes on beyond the limits of his own cabbage garden, decadence I take it, would have already far advanced.

But if the proposition I am defending may be wrongly criticised, it is still more likely to be wrongly praised. To some it will commend itself as a eulogy on an industrial as distinguished from a military civilisation: as a suggestion that in the peaceful pursuit of wealth there is that which of itself may constitute a valuable social tonic. This may be true, but it is not my contention. In talking of the alliance between industry and science my emphasis is at least as much on the word science as on the word industry. I am not concerned now with the proportion of the population devoted to productive labour, or the esteem in which they are held. It is on the effects which I believe are following, and are going in yet larger measure to follow, from the intimate relation between scientific discovery and industrial efficiency, that I most desire to insist.

Do you then, it will be asked, so highly rate the utilitarian aspect of research as to regard it as a source, not merely of material convenience, but of spiritual elevation? Is it seriously to be ranked with religion and patriotism as an important force for raising men’s lives above what is small, personal, and self-centred? Does it not rather pervert pure knowledge into a new contrivance for making money, and give a fresh triumph to the ‘growing materialism of the age’?

I do not myself believe that this age is either less spiritual or more sordid than its predecessors. I believe, indeed, precisely the reverse. But however this may be, is it not plain that if a society is to be moved by the remote speculations of isolated thinkers it can only be on condition that their isolation is not complete? Some point of contact they must have with the world in which they live, and if their influence is to be based on widespread sympathy, the contact must be in a region where there can be, if not full mutual comprehension, at least a large measure of practical agreement and willing co-operation. Philosophy has never touched the mass of men except through religion. And, though the parallel is not complete, it is safe to say that science will never touch them unaided by its practical applications. Its wonders may be catalogued for purposes of education, they may be illustrated by arresting experiments, by numbers and magnitudes which startle or fatigue the imagination; but they will form no familiar portion of the intellectual furniture of ordinary men unless they be connected, however remotely, with the conduct of ordinary life. Critics have made merry over the naive self-importance which represented man as the centre and final cause of the universe, and conceived the stupendous mechanism of nature as primarily designed to satisfy his wants and minister to his entertainment. But there is another, and an opposite, danger into which it is possible to fall. The material world, howsoever it may have gained in sublimity, has, under the touch of science, lost (so to speak) in domestic charm. Except where it affects the immediate needs of organic life, it may seem so remote from the concerns of men that in the majority it will rouse no curiosity, while of those who are fascinated by its marvels, not a few will be chilled by its impersonal and indifferent immensity.

For this latter mood only religion or religious philosophy can supply a cure. But for the former, the appropriate remedy is the perpetual stimulus which the influence of science on the business of mankind offers to their sluggish curiosity. And even now I believe this influence to be underrated. If in the last hundred years the whole material setting of civilised life has altered, we owe it neither to politicians nor to political institutions. We owe it to the combined efforts of those who have advanced science and those who have applied it. If our outlook upon the Universe has suffered modifications in detail so great and so numerous that they amount collectively to a revolution, it is to men of science we owe it, not to theologians or philosophers. On these indeed new and weighty responsibilities are being cast. They have to harmonise and to coordinate, to prevent the new from being one-sided, to preserve the valuable essence of what is old. But science is the great instrument of social change, all the greater because its object is not change but knowledge; and its silent appropriation of this dominant function, amid the din of political and religious strife, is the most vital of all the revolutions which have marked the development of modern civilisation.

It may seem fanciful to find in a single recent aspect of this revolution an influence which resembles religion or patriotism in its appeals to the higher side of ordinary characters—especially since we are accustomed to regard the appropriation by industry of scientific discoveries merely as a means of multiplying the material conveniences of life. But if it be remembered that this process brings vast sections of every industrial community into admiring relation with the highest intellectual achievement, and the most disinterested search for truth; that those who live by ministering to the common wants of average humanity lean for support on those who search among the deepest mysteries of Nature; that their dependence is rewarded by growing success; that success gives in its turn an incentive to individual effort in no wise to be measured by personal expectation of gain; that the energies thus aroused may affect the whole character of the community, spreading the beneficent contagion of hope and high endeavour through channels scarcely known, to workers[3] in fields the most remote; if all this be borne in mind it may perhaps seem not unworthy of the place I have assigned to it.

But I do not offer this speculation, whatever be its worth, as an answer to my original question. It is but an aid to optimism, not a reply to pessimism. Such a reply can only be given by a sociology which has arrived at scientific conclusions on the life-history of different types of society, and has risen above the empirical and merely interrogative point of view which, for want of a better, I have adopted in this address. No such sociology exists at present, or seems likely soon to be created. In its absence the conclusions at which I provisionally arrive are that we cannot regard decadence and arrested development as less normal in human communities than progress; though the point at which the energy of advance is exhausted (if, and when it is reached) varies in different races and civilisations: that the internal causes by which progress is encouraged, hindered, or reversed, lie to a great extent beyond the field of ordinary political discussion, and are not easily expressed in current political terminology: that the influence which a superior civilisation, whether acting by example or imposed by force, may have in advancing an inferior one, though often beneficent, is not likely to be self supporting; its withdrawal will be followed by decadence, unless the character of the civilisation be in harmony both with the acquired temperament and the innate capacities of those who have been induced to accept it: that as regards those nations which still advance in virtue of their own inherent energies, though time has brought perhaps new causes of disquiet, it has brought also new grounds of hope; and that whatever be the perils in front of us, there are, so far, no symptoms either of pause or of regression in the onward movement which for more than a thousand years has been characteristic of Western civilisation.

Notes:

[1] The ‘East’ is a term most loosely used. It does not here include China and Japan and does include parts of Africa. The observations which follow have no reference either to the Jews or to the commercial aristocracies of Phœnician origin.

[2] Beliefs include knowledge.