The confusion seemed, to a mere passenger,
worse than that of 1600 when the astronomers upset the world; it
resembled rather the convulsion of 310 when the Civitas Dei cut
itself loose from the Civitas Romae, and the Cross took the place
of the legions; but the historian accepted it all alike; he knew
that his opinion was worthless; only, in this case, he found
himself on the raft, personally and economically concerned in its
drift.
English thought had always been chaos and multiplicity itself,
in which the new step of Karl Pearson marked only a consistent
progress; but German thought had affected system, unity, and
abstract truth, to a point that fretted the most patient
foreigner, and to Germany the voyager in strange seas of thought
alone might resort with confident hope of renewing his youth.
Turning his back on Karl Pearson and England, he plunged into
Germany, and had scarcely crossed the Rhine when he fell into
libraries of new works bearing the names of Ostwald, Ernst Mach,
Ernst Haeckel, and others less familiar, among whom Haeckel was
easiest to approach, not only because of being the oldest and
clearest and steadiest spokesman of nineteenth-century mechanical
convictions, but also because in 1902 he had published a vehement
renewal of his faith. The volume contained only one paragraph
that concerned a historian; it was that in which Haeckel sank his
voice almost to a religious whisper in avowing with evident
effort, that the "proper essence of substance appeared to him
more and more marvellous and enigmatic as he penetrated further
into the knowledge of its attributes -- matter and energy -- and
as he learned to know their innumerable phenomena and their
evolution.
Pages:
639
640
641
642
643
644
645
646
647
648
649
650
651
652
653
654
655
656
657
658
659
660
661
662
663