In the vegetable and animal kingdoms a laboratory for the production of
food has been arranged, such as can be surpassed by no professors, and
to enjoy the fruits of this laboratory, and to participate in it, man
has only to yield to that ever joyful impulse to labour, without which
man’s life is a torment. And lo and behold, the scientists of our times,
instead of employing all their strength to abolish whatever hinders man
from utilising the good things prepared for him, acknowledge the
conditions under which man is deprived of these blessings to be
unalterable, and instead of arranging the life of man so that he might
work joyfully and be fed from the soil, they devise methods which will
cause him to become an artificial abortion. It is like not helping a man
out of confinement into the fresh air, but devising means, instead, to
pump into him the necessary quantity of oxygen and arranging so that he
may live in a stifling cellar instead of living at home.
Such false ideals could not exist if science were not on a false path.
And yet the feelings transmitted by art grow up on the bases supplied by
science.
But what feelings can such misdirected science evoke? One side of this
science evokes antiquated feelings, which humanity has used up, and
which, in our times, are bad and exclusive. The other side, occupied
with the study of subjects unrelated to the conduct of human life, by
its very nature cannot serve as a basis for art.
So that art in our times, to be art, must either open up its own road
independently of science, or must take direction from the unrecognised
science which is denounced by the orthodox section of science. And this
is what art, when it even partially fulfils its mission, is doing.
It is to be hoped that the work I have tried to perform concerning art
will be performed also for science—that the falseness of the theory of
science for science’s sake will be demonstrated; that the necessity of
acknowledging Christian teaching in its true meaning will be clearly
shown, that on the basis of that teaching a reappraisement will be made
of the knowledge we possess, and of which we are so proud; that the
secondariness and insignificance of experimental science, and the
primacy and importance of religious, moral, and social knowledge will be
established; and that such knowledge will not, as now, be left to the
guidance of the upper classes only, but will form a chief interest of
all free, truth-loving men, such as those who, not in agreement with the
upper classes but in their despite, have always forwarded the real
science of life.
Astronomical, physical, chemical, and biological science, as also
technical and medical science, will be studied only in so far as they
can help to free mankind from religious, juridical, or social
deceptions, or can serve to promote the well-being of all men, and not
of any single class.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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