Page:The Education of Henry Adams (1907).djvu/414

 electrolysis,—or the magnet,—or ether,—or vis inertiae,—or gravitation,—or surface tension,—or capillary attraction,—or Brownian motion,—or of some scores, or thousands, or millions of chemical attractions, repulsions or indifferences which were busy within and without him;—or, in brief, of Force itself, which, he was credibly informed, bore some dozen definitions in the text-books, mostly contradictory, and all, as he was assured, beyond his intelligence; but summed up in the dictum of the last and highest science, that Motion seems to be Matter and Matter seems to be Motion, yet “we are probably incapable of discovering” what either is. History had no need to ask what either might be; all it needed to know was the admission of ignorance; the mere fact of multiplicity baffling science. Even as to the fact, science disputed, but radium happened to radiate heat, and thus exploded the scientific magazine, bringing thought, for the time, to a stand-still; though, in the line of thought-movement in history, radium was merely the next position, familiar and inexplicable since Zeno and his arrow: continuous from the beginning of time, and discontinuous at each successive point. History set it down on the record,—pricked its position on the chart,—and waited to be led, or misled, once more.

The historian must not try to know what is truth, if he values his honesty; for, if he cares for his truths, he is certain to falsify his facts. The laws of history only repeat the lines of force or thought. Yet though his will be iron, he cannot help now and then resuming his humanity or simianity in face of a fear. The motion of thought had the same value as the motion of a cannon-ball seen approaching the observer on a direct line through the air. One could watch its curve for five thousand years. Its first violent acceleration in historical times had ended in the catastrophe of 310. The next swerve of direction occurred towards 1500. Galileo and Bacon gave a still newer curve to it, which altered its values; but all these changes had never altered the continuity. Only in 1900, the continuity snapped.

Vaguely conscious of the cataclysm, the world sometimes dated it from 1893, by the Roentgen rays, or from 1898, by the Curie's radium; but in 1904, Arthur Balfour announced on the part of British Science that the human race without exception had lived and died in a world of illusion until the last year of the century. The date was convenient, and convenience was truth.