If he
refuted physics and mathematics simply out of his own faith, he might
be accused of ignorance of the subject. He will therefore study it
conscientiously, yet with a certain irritation and haste to be done
with it, somewhat as a Jesuit might study Protestant theology. Such a
student, however, is apt to lose his pains; for in retracing a free
inquiry in his servile spirit, he remains deeply ignorant, not indeed
of its form, but of its nature and value. Why, for instance, has M.
Bergson such a horror of mechanical physics? He seems to think it a
black art, dealing in unholy abstractions, and rather dangerous to
salvation, and he keeps his metaphysical exorcisms and antidotes
always at hand, to render it innocuous, at least to his own soul. But
physical science never solicited of anybody that he should be wholly
absorbed in the contemplation of atoms, and worship them; that we must
worship and lose ourselves in reality, whatever reality may be, is a
mystic aberration, which physical science does nothing to foster. Nor
does any critical physicist suppose that what he describes is the
whole of the object; he merely notes the occasions on which its
sensible qualities appear, and calculates events. Because the
calculable side of nature is his province, he does not deny that
events have other aspects--the psychic and the moral, for
instance--no less real in their way, in terms of which calculation
would indeed be impossible.
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