British statesman (1848-1930)
We may examine what goes on between the perceiving person and the thing he perceives from either end; but it is by no means a matter of indifference with which end we begin. If we examine the relation of the perceiver to the perceived it does not seem convenient or accurate to describe that relation as a process. It is an experience, immediate and intuitive; not indeed infallible, but direct and self-sufficient. If I look at the sun, it is the sun I see, and not an image of the sun, nor a sensation which suggests the sun, or symbolizes the sun. Still less do I see ethereal vibrations, or a retinal image, or a nervous reaction, or a cerebral disturbance. For, in the act of perceiving, no intermediate entities are themselves perceived. But now if we, as it were, turn round, and, beginning at the other end, consider the relation of the perceived to the perceiver, no similar statements can be made. We find ourselves concerned, not with an act of intuition, but with a physical process, which is complicated, which occupies time, which involves many stages. We have left behind cognition; we are plunged in causation. Experience is no longer the immediate apprehension of fact; it is the transmission of a message conveyed from the object to the percipient by relays of material messengers. As to how the transmission is effected explanations vary with the growth of science. They have been entirely altered more than once since the modern era began, and with each alteration they become more complicated. They depend, not on one branch of science only, but on many. Newtonian astronomy, solar physics, the theory of radiation, the optical properties of the atmosphere, the physiology of vision, the psychology of perception, and I daresay many other branches of research, have to be drawn upon: and all this to tell us what it is we see, and how it is we come to see it.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Theism and Humanism
There are, no doubt, sceptics in religion who treat skepticism as a luxury which can be safely enjoyed only by the few. Religion they think good for morals; morals they think good for society; society they think good for themselves.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Theism and Humanism
It is no doubt true that we are surrounded by advisers who tell us that all study of the past is barren except in so far as it enables us to determine the principles by which the evolution of human societies is governed. How far such an investigation has been up to the present time fruitful in results it would be unkind to inquire. That it will ever enable us to trace with accuracy the course which states and nations are destined to pursue in the future, or to account in detail for their history in the past, I do not in the least believe. We are borne along like travelers on some unexplored stream. We may know enough of the general configuration of the globe to be sure that we are making our way towards the ocean. We may know enough, by experience or theory, of the laws regulating the flow of liquids, to conjecture how the river will behave under the varying influences to which it may be subject. More than this we cannot know. It will depend largely upon causes which, in relation to any laws which we are ever likely to discover may properly be called accidental, whether we are destined sluggishly to drift among fever-stricken swamps, to hurry down perilous rapids, or to glide gently through fair scenes of peaceful cultivation.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Lord Rector's Address, delivered at St. Andrews University, December 10, 1887
It is, no doubt, better for us to apply appropriate remedies to our diseases than to put our whole trust in the healing powers of nature. But it is better to put our trust in the healing powers of nature than to poison ourselves straight off by swallowing the contents of the first phial presented to us by any self-constituted physician.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Essays and Addresses
Fictitious narrative, whether realistic or romantic, may suggest deeper truths, may tell us more about the heart of man, than all the histories that ever were written; and may tell it more agreeably. But fact has an interest, because it is fact; because it actually happened.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Theism and Humanism
The vanity of human wishes and the brevity of human life are immemorial themes of lamentation; nor do they become less lamentable when we extend our view from the individual to the race.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Theism and Humanism
Patient genius is constantly detecting order in apparent chaos ... and when this happens, by all means rearrange your map of the universe accordingly. But do not argue that chaos is therefore non-existent.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Theism and Humanism
In the historic movements of scientific thought I see, or think I see, drifts and currents such as astronomers detect among the stars of heaven.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Theism and Humanism
The movements of belief are gradual. They resemble the slow rise or fall of ancient coast-lines, where, by imperceptible degrees, sea turns into land, or land into sea. So, without shock or clamor, man smoothly modifies his point of view, till, gazing over the spaces he has traversed, he greatly marvels at the change.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Theism and Humanism
Add belief to belief, and you will set up strains and stresses within your system of knowledge which will compel it to move towards some new position of equilibrium. Sometimes, no doubt, the process is more violent and catastrophic than this metaphor naturally suggests. Then occurs in the moral world the analogue of the earthquake, the lava flood, and the tidal wave, which shatter mountains and sweep cities to destruction. Men's outlook on the universe suffers sudden revolution: the obvious becomes incredible, and the incredible obvious; whole societies lose their balance, and stately systems are tumbled in the dust.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Theism and Humanism
It will not, I suppose, be denied that the beauties of nature are at least as well qualified to minister to our higher needs as are the beauties of literature.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Lord Rector's Address, delivered at St. Andrews University, December 10, 1887
We know by experience that a nation may suddenly blaze out into a splendor of productive genius, of which its previous history gave but faint promise, and of which its subsequent history shows but little trace.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Essays and Addresses
We are not yet in possession of anything deserving the name of political science ... the intrinsic difficulties of creating one are almost insurmountable; and ... in most cases those who attempt the task employ methods essentially arbitrary, and predestined from the beginning to be unfruitful.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Essays and Addresses
There are for all men moments when the need for some general point of view becomes insistent; when neither labor, nor care, nor pleasure, nor idleness, nor habit will stop a man from asking how he is to regard the universe of reality, how he is to think of it as a whole, how he is to think of his own relation to it.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Theism and Humanism
Materialism has never been the prevailing creed among lovers of beauty.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Theism and Humanism
Instincts are (relatively) definite and stable; they move in narrow channels; they cannot easily be enlarged in scope, or changed in character. The animal mother, for example, cares for its young children, but never for its young grandchildren. The lifelong fidelity of the parent birds in certain species (a fidelity seemingly independent of the pairing season, or the care of particular broods) never becomes the nucleus of a wider association. Altruistic instincts may lead to actions which equal, or surpass, man's highest efforts of abnegation; but the actions are matters of routine, and the instincts never vary. They emerge in the same form at the same stage of individual growth, like any other attribute of the species—its color, for instance, or its claws. And if they be, like color and claws, the products of selection, this is exactly what we should expect. But then, if the loyalties of man be also the product of selection, why do they not show a similar fixity?
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Theism and Humanism
But while we thank the mathematician for his aid in conquering Nature, we envy him his powers of understanding her. Though he deals, it would seem, entirely with abstractions, they are abstractions which, at his persuasion, supply the key to the profoundest secrets of the physical universe. He holds the clues to mazes where the clearest intellect, unaided, would wander hopelessly astray.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Theism and Humanism
Truly it is a subject for astonishment that, instead of expanding to the utmost the employment of this pleasure-giving faculty, so many persons should set themselves to work to limit its exercise by all kinds of arbitrary regulations. Some there are, for example, who tell us that the acquisition of knowledge is all very well, but that it must be useful knowledge, meaning usually thereby that it must enable a man to get on in a profession, pass an examination, shine in conversation, or obtain a reputation for learning. But even if they mean something higher than this, even if they mean that knowledge to be worth anything must subserve ultimately if not immediately the material or spiritual interests of mankind, the doctrine is one which should be energetically repudiated. I admit, of course, at once, that discoveries the most apparently remote from human concerns have often proved themselves of the utmost commercial or manufacturing value. But they require no such justification for their existence, nor were they striven for with any such object. Navigation is not the final cause of astronomy, nor telegraphy of electro-dynamics, nor dye-works of chemistry. And if it be true that the desire of knowledge for the sake of knowledge was the animating motive of the great men who first wrested her secrets from nature, why should it not also be enough for us, to whom it is not given to discover, but only to learn as best we may what has been discovered by others?
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Lord Rector's Address, delivered at St. Andrews University, December 10, 1887
As, therefore, nature knows nothing of good intentions, rewarding and punishing not motives but actions; as things are what they are, describe them as we may, and their consequences will be what they will be.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Essays and Addresses
History, again, tells us of successive civilizations which have been born, have for a space thriven exceedingly, and have then miserably perished.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Essays and Addresses