Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/592

588 that it is as unscientific, and therefore as illusory, to seek a plan in the course of events as it would be to seek a plan in the constitution of the cosmos. Some of their maxims are:

There can be no doubt that the gradual change that has come over the attitude of the more intelligent public opinion toward the past is due to the progress of physical science. The man who is in advance of his age usually has to pay the penalty for his rashness. How many men beginning with Anaxagoras have suffered banishment, imprisonment and torture for daring to know more than those who had his fate in their hands. It is a melancholy tale that has been repeated over and over again. Albeit, in the conflict between conservatism and radicalism the latter has always won in the end. To it has come the reward that always comes to the undismayed searcher for truth.

The fundamental principle of art is deception. A work of art is either an illusion or a delusion. It is never an exact reproduction of nature, of facts. A portrait which accurately represents an original is not artistic. A painting, a photograph, an engraving is such a disposition of white upon black or of colors as to produce the illusion of relief. An accurate drawing can not be made of a work of art. Neither can work on chemistry, or on physics or on biology or on mathematics be made artistic. The same is true, in a large measure, of historical writings. A faithful chronicle is not a history even when the connection between cause and effect is clearly set forth. It comes too near the truth, it approaches too close to science to be interesting to the great majority of readers. Hence the more artistically a history is constructed, the more popular it is likely to become, and likewise the more unreliable. The purpose of the artist is to produce pleasure by deceiving the spectator or the reader. Every historian endeavors to make his work interesting, readable. No scientist feels such a prompting. The distinction that is now usually made between the terms science, knowledge and learning is not of long standing. Bacon's "Advancement of Learning" is merely a translation of "De Augmentis Scientiarum." Science, as now generally interpreted, means the accumulation of facts relating to man and the universe that have been discovered because they were sought. Learning is used to designate data that have been stored up in the memory without examination of their accordance with facts. A man may be very learned, yet be in possession of a very small quantity of real information. Knowledge is used to designate those facts that men have come into possession of by experience and observation. Rome grew great and eventually made itself master of the known world