ARTHUR BALFOUR QUOTES II
British statesman (1848-1930)
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We now know too much about matter to be materialists.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
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Theism and Humanism
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Beauty must be more than an accident.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Theism and Humanism
Physical decay slowly despoils us of the masterpieces of painting. Artistic evolution will even more surely despoil us of the masterpieces of music. Let us, then, rejoice that we live in an age to whose ears the sublimest creations of the modern imagination, in the only art which owes nothing to antiquity, have not yet grown flat and unprofitable; that we are not driven to rake painfully among the ashes of the past in order to detect some faint traces of that fire of inspiration which once dazzled the world.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Essays and Addresses
That history has aesthetic value is evident. An age which is both scientific and utilitarian occasionally pretends to see in it no more than the raw material of a science called sociology, and a storehouse of precedents from which statesmen may draw maxims for the guidance of mankind. It may be all this, but it is certainly more. What has in the main caused history to be written, and when written to be eagerly read, is neither its scientific value nor its practical utility, but its aesthetic interest. Men love to contemplate the performances of their fellows, and whatever enables them to do so, whether we belittle it as gossip, or exalt it as history, will find admirers in abundance.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Theism and Humanism
The pessimist finds in art the solitary mitigation of human miseries. A certain type of agnostic treats it as an undogmatic substitute for religion. He worships beauty, but nothing else; and expects from it all the consolations of religious experience without the burdens of religious belief. Even those who would refuse to art and literature this exalted position, are prepared to praise them without stint. They regard the contemplative study of beautiful things as a most potent instrument of civilization; in countless perorations they preach its virtues; delicacy of aesthetic discrimination they deem the surest proof of culture, and the enjoyment of aesthetic excellence its highest reward.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Theism and Humanism
True beliefs are effects no less than false. In this respect magic and mathematics are on a level.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Theism and Humanism
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
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
If in opera the music impaired the verisimilitude of the acting, it is not less true that acting limited the variety of the music.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Essays and Addresses
Some great crisis in its fate may stamp upon a race marks which neither lapse of time nor change of circumstance seem able wholly to efface; and empires may rise from barbarism to civilization and sink again from civilization into barbarism, within periods so brief that we may take it as certain, whatever be our opinion as to the transmission of acquired faculties, that no hereditary influence has had time to operate.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Essays and Addresses
An acquaintance with the laws of nature does not always, nor even commonly, carry with it the means of controlling them. Knowledge is seldom power. And a sociologist so coldly independent of the social forces among which he lived as thoroughly to understand them, would, in all probability, be as impotent to guide the evolution of a community as an astronomer to modify the orbit of a comet.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Essays and Addresses
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
The fact is, of course, that the metaphysician wants to re-think the universe; the plain man does not. The metaphysician seeks for an inclusive system where all reality can be rationally housed. The plain man is less ambitious. He is content with the kind of knowledge he possesses about men and things—so far as it goes. Science has already told him much; each day it tells him more. And, within the clearing thus made for him in the tangled wilderness of the unknown, he feels at home.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Theism and Humanism
We shall, I think, be forced to admit that all creeds which refuse to see an intelligent purpose behind the unthinking powers of material nature are intrinsically incoherent.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Theism and Humanism
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
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
Few persons are prevented from thinking themselves right by the reflection that, if they be right, the rest of the world is wrong.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Theism and Humanism
I do not suggest that works of art are useless. A building may be beautiful, although it is also convenient. A sword most delicately damascened may be an admirable engine of destruction. We may even go further and admit that utility unadorned may have about it an aesthetic flavor. Nice adjustment and fitness exquisitely accomplished are without doubt agreeable objects of contemplation. But, in the first two of these cases, beauty is deliberately added to utility, not organically connected with it. An ill-proportioned building might have been equally fitted for its purpose; a plain sword might have been equally lethal. In the third case the connection between utility and aesthetic interest is organic, yet undesigned. From the very nature of the case it forms no part of the purpose for which the mechanism was contrived.
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
But in our dislike of the individual do not let us mistake the diagnosis of his disease. He suffers not from ignorance but from stupidity. Give him learning and you make him not wise, but only more pretentious in his folly.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Lord Rector's Address, delivered at St. Andrews University, December 10, 1887