British statesman (1848-1930)
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
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
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
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
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
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
That there are beliefs which can and should be held, with the same shade of meaning, by all men, in all ages, and at all stages of culture, is a view to which by nature we easily incline. But it is, to say the least, most doubtful. Language is here no true or certain guide. Even when beliefs have not outgrown the formulas by which they have been traditionally expressed, we must beware of treating this fixity of form as indicating complete identity of substance. Men do not necessarily believe exactly the same thing because they express their convictions in exactly the same phrases. And most fortunate it is, in the interests of individual liberty, social co-operation, and institutional continuity that this latitude should be secured to us, not by the policy of philosophers, statesmen, or divines, but by the inevitable limitations of language.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Theism and Humanism
The prestige of Western arts and science may assist the diffusion of Western morals, as it assists the diffusion of Western languages, or Western clothes.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Theism and Humanism
It is perfectly possible for a man, not a professed student, and who only gives to reading the leisure hours of a business life, to acquire such a general knowledge of the laws of nature and the facts of history that every great advance made in either department shall be to him both intelligible and interesting; and he may besides have among his familiar friends many a departed worthy whose memory is embalmed in the pages of memoir or biography. All this is ours for the asking. All this we shall ask for if only it be our happy fortune to love for its own sake the beauty and the knowledge to be gathered from books. And if this be our fortune, the world may be kind or unkind, it may seem to us to be hastening on the wings of enlightenment and progress to an imminent millennium, or it may weigh us down with the sense of insoluble difficulty and irremediable wrong; but whatever else it be, so long as we have good health and a good library, it can hardly be dull.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Lord Rector's Address, delivered at St. Andrews University, December 10, 1887
Things are not changed by a mere change of place, but a change of place relative to an observer always changes their appearance for him. Common sense is, therefore, compelled in this, as in countless other cases, to distinguish the appearance of a thing from its reality; and to hold, as an essential article of its working creed, that appearances may alter, leaving realities unchanged.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Theism and Humanism
I, of course, admit that the conception of God has taken many shapes in the long-drawn course of human development, some of them degraded, all of them inadequate.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Theism and Humanism
In giving up the attempt to combine dramatic music with dramatic representation, the oratorio freed itself at once from all these absurdities, and all these limitations. It ceased to be acting marred by singing; it became recitation glorified by music.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Essays and Addresses
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
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
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
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
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
Materialism has never been the prevailing creed among lovers of beauty.
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
The story of the rise, greatness, and decay of a nation is like some vast epic which contains as subsidiary episodes the varied stories of the rise, greatness, and decay of creeds, of parties and of statesmen. The imagination is moved by the slow unrolling of this great picture of human mutability, as it is moved by the contrasted permanence of the abiding stars. The ceaseless conflict, the strange echoes of long-forgotten controversies, the confusion of purpose, the successes in which lay deep the seeds of future evils, the failures that ultimately divert the otherwise inevitable danger, the heroism which struggles to the last for a cause foredoomed to defeat, the wickedness which sides with right, and the wisdom which huzzas at the triumph of folly—fate, meanwhile, amidst this turmoil and perplexity, working silently towards the predestined end—all these form together a subject the contemplation of which need surely never weary.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Lord Rector's Address, delivered at St. Andrews University, December 10, 1887