British statesman (1848-1930)
The fact is, of course, that the metaphysician wants to re-think the universe; the plain man does not. The metaphysician seeks for an inclusive system where all reality can be rationally housed. The plain man is less ambitious. He is content with the kind of knowledge he possesses about men and things—so far as it goes. Science has already told him much; each day it tells him more. And, within the clearing thus made for him in the tangled wilderness of the unknown, he feels at home.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Theism and Humanism
Patient genius is constantly detecting order in apparent chaos ... and when this happens, by all means rearrange your map of the universe accordingly. But do not argue that chaos is therefore non-existent.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Theism and Humanism
It is, no doubt, better for us to apply appropriate remedies to our diseases than to put our whole trust in the healing powers of nature. But it is better to put our trust in the healing powers of nature than to poison ourselves straight off by swallowing the contents of the first phial presented to us by any self-constituted physician.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Essays and Addresses
It is no doubt true that we are surrounded by advisers who tell us that all study of the past is barren except in so far as it enables us to determine the principles by which the evolution of human societies is governed. How far such an investigation has been up to the present time fruitful in results it would be unkind to inquire. That it will ever enable us to trace with accuracy the course which states and nations are destined to pursue in the future, or to account in detail for their history in the past, I do not in the least believe. We are borne along like travelers on some unexplored stream. We may know enough of the general configuration of the globe to be sure that we are making our way towards the ocean. We may know enough, by experience or theory, of the laws regulating the flow of liquids, to conjecture how the river will behave under the varying influences to which it may be subject. More than this we cannot know. It will depend largely upon causes which, in relation to any laws which we are ever likely to discover may properly be called accidental, whether we are destined sluggishly to drift among fever-stricken swamps, to hurry down perilous rapids, or to glide gently through fair scenes of peaceful cultivation.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Lord Rector's Address, delivered at St. Andrews University, December 10, 1887
I, of course, admit that the conception of God has taken many shapes in the long-drawn course of human development, some of them degraded, all of them inadequate.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Theism and Humanism
Apart from life and thought, there is no reason to regard one form of material distribution as in any respect superior to another. A solar system may be more interesting than its parent nebula; it may be more beautiful. But if there be none to unravel its intricacies or admire its splendors, in what respect is it better? Its constituent atoms are more definitely grouped, the groups move in assignable orbits; but why should the process by which these results have been achieved be regarded as other than one of purposeless change superinduced upon meaningless uniformity? Why should this type of "evolution" have about it any suggestion of progress? And, if it has not, how can it indicate design?
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Theism and Humanism
A community founded upon argument would soon be a community no longer. It would dissolve into its constituent elements.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Essays and Addresses
Whereas reasons may, and usually do, figure among the proximate causes of belief ... it is always possible to ... penetrate but a short way down, and they are found no more.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Theism and Humanism
What at first was the delight of nations declines by slow but inevitable gradation into the luxury, or the business, or even the vanity of a few. What once spoke in accents understood by all is now painfully spelt out by a small band of scholars. What was once read for pleasure is now read for curiosity. It becomes "an interesting illustration of the taste of a bygone age," a "remarkable proof of such and such a theory of aesthetics."
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Essays and Addresses
Truly it is a subject for astonishment that, instead of expanding to the utmost the employment of this pleasure-giving faculty, so many persons should set themselves to work to limit its exercise by all kinds of arbitrary regulations. Some there are, for example, who tell us that the acquisition of knowledge is all very well, but that it must be useful knowledge, meaning usually thereby that it must enable a man to get on in a profession, pass an examination, shine in conversation, or obtain a reputation for learning. But even if they mean something higher than this, even if they mean that knowledge to be worth anything must subserve ultimately if not immediately the material or spiritual interests of mankind, the doctrine is one which should be energetically repudiated. I admit, of course, at once, that discoveries the most apparently remote from human concerns have often proved themselves of the utmost commercial or manufacturing value. But they require no such justification for their existence, nor were they striven for with any such object. Navigation is not the final cause of astronomy, nor telegraphy of electro-dynamics, nor dye-works of chemistry. And if it be true that the desire of knowledge for the sake of knowledge was the animating motive of the great men who first wrested her secrets from nature, why should it not also be enough for us, to whom it is not given to discover, but only to learn as best we may what has been discovered by others?
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Lord Rector's Address, delivered at St. Andrews University, December 10, 1887
To him who is not a specialist, a comprehension of the broad outlines of the universe as it presents itself to the scientific imagination is the thing most worth striving to attain.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Lord Rector's Address, delivered at St. Andrews University, December 10, 1887
There are, no doubt, sceptics in religion who treat skepticism as a luxury which can be safely enjoyed only by the few. Religion they think good for morals; morals they think good for society; society they think good for themselves.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Theism and Humanism
The pessimist finds in art the solitary mitigation of human miseries. A certain type of agnostic treats it as an undogmatic substitute for religion. He worships beauty, but nothing else; and expects from it all the consolations of religious experience without the burdens of religious belief. Even those who would refuse to art and literature this exalted position, are prepared to praise them without stint. They regard the contemplative study of beautiful things as a most potent instrument of civilization; in countless perorations they preach its virtues; delicacy of aesthetic discrimination they deem the surest proof of culture, and the enjoyment of aesthetic excellence its highest reward.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Theism and Humanism
Some great crisis in its fate may stamp upon a race marks which neither lapse of time nor change of circumstance seem able wholly to efface; and empires may rise from barbarism to civilization and sink again from civilization into barbarism, within periods so brief that we may take it as certain, whatever be our opinion as to the transmission of acquired faculties, that no hereditary influence has had time to operate.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Essays and Addresses
Materialism has never been the prevailing creed among lovers of beauty.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Theism and Humanism
Few persons are prevented from thinking themselves right by the reflection that, if they be right, the rest of the world is wrong.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Theism and Humanism
But while we thank the mathematician for his aid in conquering Nature, we envy him his powers of understanding her. Though he deals, it would seem, entirely with abstractions, they are abstractions which, at his persuasion, supply the key to the profoundest secrets of the physical universe. He holds the clues to mazes where the clearest intellect, unaided, would wander hopelessly astray.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Theism and Humanism
As, therefore, nature knows nothing of good intentions, rewarding and punishing not motives but actions; as things are what they are, describe them as we may, and their consequences will be what they will be.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Essays and Addresses
An acquaintance with the laws of nature does not always, nor even commonly, carry with it the means of controlling them. Knowledge is seldom power. And a sociologist so coldly independent of the social forces among which he lived as thoroughly to understand them, would, in all probability, be as impotent to guide the evolution of a community as an astronomer to modify the orbit of a comet.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Essays and Addresses
There are for all men moments when the need for some general point of view becomes insistent; when neither labor, nor care, nor pleasure, nor idleness, nor habit will stop a man from asking how he is to regard the universe of reality, how he is to think of it as a whole, how he is to think of his own relation to it.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Theism and Humanism