Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/445

Rh screws were used before the principles of the lever and inclined plane involved in their use were understood. The art of music was carried to exquisite perfection before the scientific principles of harmony were known. Pottery, agriculture, and many other useful arts were not only practiced, but carried to a high degree of perfection, before the corresponding sciences were born. The capacity for art is inherited from the animal kingdom. Science is born of humanity, and is therefore distinctively human. Art is born of instinct or intuition; science of the conscious reason. Art is the result, at first, of the empirical method; science always of the rational method. I repeat, then, art precedes, leads upward to the comprehension of science; but science, when sufficiently perfect, turns again and perfects art. Art is the earthly mother of science; but the celestial daughter, when mature, turns again and blesses and helps her mother. Even so is it with human society. The art of government and of social organization precedes the corresponding science, and is its necessary condition; but when sufficiently perfect, sociology will undertake to modify and better the social organization, and guide the social development.

But I said, art is inherited from the animal kingdom; science is born of humanity. For this reason art is of itself limited; science is unlimited, for it is connected only with the highest nature of man, the spiritual and eternal. Art may be carried to a high degree of perfection, but unless assisted by science quickly culminates and declines, or else becomes petrified and immutable; but if its principles be understood, if it becomes allied with science, if it passes under the dominion of the self-conscious reason, it then becomes indefinitely progressive. So also that highest art, the art of government and social organization, may reach, unassisted by science, a high degree of perfection; but if it be simply an art it quickly culminates and declines, or else becomes petrified and immutable, as we see in the Chinese and Japanese. As in the organic kingdom each organic form is specialized to the greatest extent and then becomes immutable and generally perishes; as the tree of life branches, and each branch grows its several way—flowers, fruits, and dies—even so each isolated nation, or branch of the social tree, pushes its growth it knows not whither, but as far as possible in its direction, then flowers, fruits, and dies. But if the scientific principles of sociology be once understood, if science or self-conscious reason guide the social development, there can no longer be any limit to its progress. But observe: this indefinite progress is due wholly to the introduction of other principles than those derived from purely animal nature; it violates the perfect analogy to material organisms. In fact science, which determines and guides that indefinite progress, is itself born only of that higher nature.

But again: all who have reflected much on the relation of science to art can not fail to have observed that while a mature science guides art with certainty, and continues to perfect it without limit, yet there