Part 23 (1/2)
The historian must not try to knohat 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 resu his huht had the sa 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 cataclysen 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
The child born in 1900 would, then, be born into a neorld which would not be a unity but a ine it, and an education that would fit it He found himself in a land where no one had ever penetrated before; where order was an accidental relation obnoxious to nature; artificial coy of the universe revolted; and which, being merely occasional, resolved itself back into anarchy at last He could not deny that the law of the new multiverse explained much that had been most obscure, especially the persistently fiendish treatment of man by man; the perpetual effort of society to establish law, and the perpetual revolt of society against the law it had established; the perpetual building up of authority by force, and the perpetual appeal to force to overthrow it; the perpetual syher law, and the perpetual relapse to a lower one; the perpetual victory of the principles of freedom, and their perpetual conversion into principles of power; but the staggering problem was the outlook ahead into the despotism of artificial order which nature abhorred The physicists had a phrase for it, unintelligible to the vulgar: ”All that in is a battle--lost in advance--with the irreversible phenoround of nature”
All that a historian as a vehement wish to escape He saw his education coan it As a hteenth-century education when God was a father and nature a mother, and all was for the best in a scientific universe He repudiated all share in the world as it was to be, and yet he could not detect the point where his responsibility began or ended
As history unveiled itself in the new order,its universe to suit its conditions until it had built up a shell of nacre that embodied all its notions of the perfect Man kneas true because he made it, and he loved it for the same reason He sacrificed millions of lives to acquire his unity, but he achieved it, and justly thought it a work of art The woher level than the in as guardian of the man's God The man's part in his Universe was secondary, but the woman was at home there, and sacrificed herself without limit to make it habitable, when man permitted it, as sometimes happened for brief intervals of war and faainst forces of nature She did not think of her universe as a raft to which the lie of a supersensual chaos; she conceived herself and her family as the centre and flower of an ordered universe which she knew to be unity because she had e of her own fecundity; and this creation of hers was surrounded by beauties and perfections which she knew to be real because she herself had iined them
Even the masculine philosopher adreatest of the it in the noblest of his verses:--
”Aleruiferenteis Concelebras
Quae quondaubernas, Nec sine te quidquam dias in luminis oras Exoritur, neque fit laetum neque amabile quidquam; Te sociam studeo!”
Neither man nor woman ever wanted to quit this Eden of their own invention, and could no more have done it of their own accord than the pearl oyster could quit its shell; but although the oyster rain of sand forced into its aperture, it could only perish in face of the cyclonic hurricane or the volcanic upheaval of its bed Her supersensual chaos killed her
Such seeeneration born after 1900 For this theory, Adams felt himself in no way responsible Even as historian he hadthat had ever been thought respectable--except an occasional statesman; but he had submitted to force all his life, and he meant to accept it for the future as for the past All his efforts had been turned only to the search for its channel He never invented his facts; they were furnished him by the only authorities he could find As for hi to Helmholz, Ernst Mach, and Arthur Balfour, he was henceforth to be a conscious ball of vibrating motions, traversed in every direction by infinite lines of rotation or vibration, rolling at the feet of the Virgin at Chartres or of M Poincare in an attic at Paris, a centre of supersensual chaos The discovery did not distress him A solitary man of sixty-five years or more, alone in a Gothic cathedral or a Paris apartment, need fret himself little about a few illusions more or less
He should have learned his lesson fifty years earlier; the ti passed when a student could stop before chaos or order; he had no choice but to march with his world
Nevertheless, he could not pretend that his mind felt flattered by this scientific outlook Every fabulist has told how the huhtened bird to escape the chaos which caged it; how--appearing suddenly and inexplicably out of so half its known life in the mental chaos of sleep; victim even when awake, to its own ill-adjustestion, to nature's co its sensations, and, in the last resort, trusting only to instru astonish blankly into the void of death That it should profess itself pleased by this perfor could ask; but that it should actually be satisfied would prove that it existed only as idiocy
Satisfied, the future generation could scarcely think itself, for even when the mind existed in a universe of its own creation, it had never been quite at ease As far as one ventured to interpret actual science, the mind had thus far adjusted itself by an infinite series of infinitely delicate adjustments forced on it by the infinite ed at oneto scramble back within its senses and to bar the chaos out, but always assi bits of it, until at last, in 1900, a new avalanche of unknown forces had fallen on it, which required new mental powers to control If this vieas correct, the e in its supersensual multiverse, or succumb to it
CHAPTER xxxII
VIS NOVA (1903-1904)
PARIS after midsummer is a place where only the industrious poor reet away; but Adams knew no spot where history would be better off, and the calm of the Champs Elysees was so deep that when Mr de Witte was pronity, no one whispered that the proht have supposed, from the silence, that the Viceroy Alexeieff had reoccupied Manchuria as a fulfilation For once, the conspiracy of silence became crime Never had so modern and so vital a riddle been put before Western society, but society shut its eyes
Manchuria knew every step into war; japan had completed every preparation; Alexeieff had collected his aruns and laying in enormous stores, ready for the expected attack; from Yokohama to Irkutsk, the whole East was under war conditions; but Europe knew nothing The banks would allow no disturbance; the press said not a word, and even the embassies were silent Every anarchist in Europe buzzed exciteroups, but the Hotel Ritz was calm, and the Grand Dukes armed there professed to know directly from the Winter Palace that there would be no war
As usual, Adah the sense was fanorance was assumed After nearly fifty years of experience, he could not understand how the comedy could be so well acted Even as late as Nove every passer-by for his opinion, and avowed none of their own except as directly authorized at St Petersburg He couldof it He found his of Russian inertia--and he could conceive no way of for an opinion how much was real and how much was comedy had he been in the Winter Palace himself At times he doubted whether the Grand Dukes or the Czar knew, but old diplo forbade him to admit such innocence
This was the situation at Christmas when he left Paris On January 6, 1904, he reached Washi+ngton, where the contrast of atmosphere astonished him, for he had never before seen his country think as a world-power No doubt, japanese diplomacy had much to do with this alertness, but the immense superiority of japanese diplomacy should have been more evident in Europe than in America, and in any case, could not account for the total disappearance of Russian diploreatly disconcerted study One was led to suspect that Cassini never heard fro of his own department; yet no such suspicion could be adue: ”japan seemed infatuated even to the point of war! But what can the japanese do? As usual, sit on their heels and pray to Buddha!” One of the oldest and most accomplished diplomatists in the service could never show his hand so empty as this if he held a card to play; but he never betrayed stronger resource behind ”If any japanese succeed in entering Manchuria, they will never get out of it alive” The inertia of Cassini, as naturally the etic of diplomatists, deeply interested a student of race-inertia, whose mind had lost itself in the attempt to invent scales of force
The air of official Russia seemed most dramatic in the air of the White House, by contrast with the outspoken candor of the President Reticence had no place there Every one in America saw that, whether Russia or japan were victiles in A, and any presence of secrecy or indifference was absurd Interest was acute, and curiosity intense, for no one knehat the Russian Government meant or wanted, while war had becoravely doubted whether the Czar hiht, the straight-forward avowals of Roosevelt had singular value as a standard of ed to take the place of his brother Brooks at the Diplomatic Reception immediately after his return ho at the President's table, with Secretary Root on one side, the President opposite, and Miss Chamberlain between theuests listened; which seemed, to one who had just escaped fro a free breath after stifling Roosevelt, as every one kneas always an a indiscreet beyond any other reat importance in the world, except the Kaiser Wilheluest at table; and this evening he spared none With the usual abuse of the quos ego, coht about Russians and japanese, as well as about Boers and British, without restraint, in full hearing of twenty people, to the entire satisfaction of his listener; and concluded by declaring that as iht to be stopped; that it could be stopped: ”I could do it myself; I could stop it to-morrow!” and he went on to explain his reasons for restraint
That he was right, and that, within another generation, his successor would do what he would have liked to do, h it would have been folly when he last supped at the White House in the dynasty of President Hayes; but the listener cared less for the assertion of power, than for the vigor of view The truth was evident enough, ordinary, even commonplace if one liked, but it was not a truth of inertia, nor was the method to be mistaken for inert
Nor could the force of japan be ressive was taken as methodically--as ht that as against any but Russians it would have lost its opening Each day counted as a y on the historical scale, and the whole story made a Grammar of new Science quite as instructive as that of Pearson
The forces thus launched were bound to reach some new equilibrium which would prove the problem in one sense or another, and the war had no personal value for Adareat triu contest with Cassini so skillfully that no one knew enough to understand the diplomatic perfection of his work, which contained no error; but such success is complete only when it is invisible, and his victory at last was victory of judg, and the whole country would have sprung on hiland saved his ”open door” and fought his battle All that remained for hi the peace quickly in hand, for Hay's sake as well as for that of Russia He thought then that it could be done in one can, for he knew that, in a otiation, and every one felt that Hay would inevitably direct it; but the race was close, and while the war grew every day in proportions, Hay's strength every day declined