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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 July 2024
Nothing has yet been done, and, here, in the middle of the twentieth century, it is fast becoming too late to draw up a suitable catalogue of the works of human wisdom. We are forced to project for the future the complete realization of our desires. This future will no doubt discover a conscious and effective organization of thought and action—a constant good fortune in the pursuit of legitimate satisfactions through a total mastery of natural forces—in a word, a perfect and reciprocal adaptation between man and that part of the universe in which he lives. All this, or most of it, still remains to be done; but much has already been said in the five thousand years that men have been writing. An intelligent observer arriving from Sirius would doubtless be especially struck by the extraordinary gap separating here on earth what is so well said from what is so badly carried out. Or rather he would wonder how it is that beings as highly gifted as men, judging from the knowledge and wisdom they have accumulated, still make such ineffective and even harmful use of the means at their disposal. The most indulgent hypothesis would be to see in this the result of a temporary misunderstanding owing to the great speed with which human thought evolves. Our observer would resume his journey then, resolved to return after a hundred years or two, sure that he would then find that man had bridged the gap and become as great in what he does as in what he knows.
1. Multisyllabic words designating precisely a very complex situation but entirely sui generis and not resolvable; that is, containing neither roots nor affixes used elsewhere. The best known example is "mamihlapinatapaï," which, in Tierra del Fuego, designates the situation in which two persons look at each other, each hoping to see the other undertake an action which both wish for without being disposed to take the initiative.
2. The objection will be raised that certain microbes may sometimes persist a long time outside carriers, for instance, in the spore state; but ideas, too, when they are written, subsist in total lethargy and resume their normal existence only through inoculation into a living brain.
3. We have seen that the Gods, who are not subject to systematic proofs, could make no progress. They appear, more or less powerful, and disappear in an almost unpredictable fashion. This is also true of schools of art, the oldest of which, the Paleolithic, offers us at the outset works which sustain any critical comparison we may wish to make. The same thing happens in our modem world, where it is possible to form with certainty a generation of technicians and scientific types, while the most meritorious and sustained efforts often fail to strike the spark of artistic creation.
4. A quite superficial justification comparable to that which we give, sometimes as an afterthought and because of the need for logic, to the obscure but irresistible impulsions of affectivity.
5. Works of art, which are in the religious, sentimental, or sensual realm, are here included in the mystical group, since they are linked to the search for direct contact between beings, whether human or divine, and since they are independent of all rational logic.
6. Here I cannot resist the pleasure of recalling the story of Cauchy, a fervent Catholic, discussing his theory of the functions of a complex variable with his father-confessor. The latter spoke dazzlingly of the satisfactions Cauchy would have in finally knowing the full truth of these things when he appeared before God. "I shall learn nothing new," answered Cauchy, "for I have given the complete solution." And then there is Laplace's answer to Napoleon, who asked him what place he had assigned to God in his cosmogony: "Sire, I have had no need of that hypothesis.'
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