THE CERTAINTY OF UNCERTAINTY.

Evening Star, Issue 15074, 4 January 1913, Page 2

THE CERTAINTY OF UNCERTAINTY.

That sounds like a paradox. But it may be nothing the worse for that. For a paradox, as somebody says, is merely truth standing on its tip-toes to get itself seen and heard. Whether or not the Certainty of Uncertainty is a paradox, it is certainly a fact anyway. And it is a fact whose existence and issues are worth considering on the threshold of a New Year. ******* The Certainty of Uncertainty is a truth that does not seem to be widely recognised. Men talk and write as if everything, or, at any rate, many things, were perfectly sure. They accumulate facts and predict what must and must not be. They say this is bound to happen, and that other will unquestionably not take place. Good Lord! (writes Mr Belloc in one of his essays) to read the Press and to hear the speeches! Why, one would think that the future had" a map to it! One can hardly hear oneself think for prophecies. . . . Men in England to- ' day regard the future of the earth for, let us say, the next hundred years in a certain light. Certain countries, especially new countries, are to increase in a regular manner in value, population, and prosperity. Certain others are to continue their decline. Certain forms of mechanical perfection are to increase; certain speculations of the soul are to decline in interest. And so on. This attitude, or temper, or mode of viewing things is all-pervasive. We think that to-morrow will be as this day, and even more' abundant. We count confidently upon a certain course of events, upon the determinate issue of causes and laws that we see in operation to-day. But "never prophesy unless you know " is a wise counsel. Life is full of surprises; and nothing is truer than the proverbial saving "It is the unexpected that happens." * * * * * * * The evidences of this abound in every direction. A Home paper was recently accumulating a catena of " Unfulfilled Prophecies." It filled columns, with a catalogue of them. They prove very instructive, not to say amusing, reading. The tips of the secular prophets turn out as badly aB those of the racing ones. Statesmen, philosophers, poets, scientists are all ludicrously duped by the veiled Power that directs the course of the world. Time seems grimly to rejoice in making foolish the wisdom of the wise. Dickens, writing from Philadelphia, predicted that the negro race would die out quickly. They could not stand, up before the stronger white man. Yet to-day the negroes have outdistanced the latter in fecundity, and even threaten their very supremacy. The great French statesman Thiers declared that "railways would never be of any use in the transport of "goods," white Cotter Morison, in his famous book ' The Service of Man' (which critics said at the time had given a deathblow to the Christian religion), affirmed that the steam engine would lead to commercial catastrophe. When the 'Pickwick Papers' appeared tho 'Quarterly ■Review' declared that an "ephemeral "popularity, to be followed by early ob"livion, was the inevitable doom of "literature of that class." The recent glorification of the Dickens Centenary is a curious commentary on that prophecy. Nor does Science come off much better when it assumes the prophet's role. Sir Alfred Knssel -Wallace says scientific men are always wrong. That is surely too absolute. But it is suggestive to remember that almost all the great discoveries were pronounced impossible and irrational at first. When Benjamin Franklin brought the subject of lightning conductors before, the Royal Society of England he was laughed at as a dreamer, and his paper was not admitted into the ' Philosophical Transactions.' When Young put forth his proofs of tho undidatory theory of light the- latter was hooted at as absurd by his scientific contemporaries. The. ' Edinburgh Review ' called upon the public to put Thomas Gray in a fiti'nitjacket for maintaining the practicability of railroads. Sir Humphry Davy laughed at the idea of London, ever , being lighted with gas. When Stephenson I proposed to use locomotives on the [ Liverpool and Manchester Railway learned men gave* evidence that it was impossible they could go 12 miles an. hour. A high scientific authority declared it to be impossible for oc«vi'.i steamers ever to cross the Atlantic, while another said that .he ■ would eat the first one that did. The [ French Academy of Sciences ridiculed the - great astronomer Arago when he wanted [ even to discuss the subject of the electric • telegraph. Medical men refused the stethoscope when it was first discovered. Within living memory matter was re- . garded as dead, inert, and the atom was - thought to be certainly the ultimate oE , elements. To-day matter is almost disappearing from the vocabulary of science; the atom is found to be more complex f than planets and worlds, while the dis- * covexy o.f radium has revolutionised I thought as to what is or is not. 1 *******

It is in political affairs, par haps, that the Certainty of Uncertainty finds its most striking illustrations. In June, 1870, Lord Hammond, the Permanent UnderSecretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and supposed to know more about Continental politics than any other man then living, told Lord Granville that "the world had "never been so profoundly at peace or " the diplomatic atmosphere so serene" as at that precise moment. Less than three weeks afterwards war was declared between France and Germany. We have only to look at Europe at this moment to find an impressive illustration of our thesis. It is scarcely more than a month or eo since war began to be talked of between Turkey and Bulgaria, The European Concert of the Great Powers was thought to be the controlling influence. What they said would be law for the Allies. They even went the length of warning the latter that no matter what was the issue of the war they would allow no extension of territory. And then little Montenegro took the- field, and Bulgaria, Seyvia, and Greece followed suit. And 10, in two or three weeks Turkey is on her knees suing for peace ! The Great Powers have been amazed. They have become conscious that a new force has suddenly appexxred upon the scene—a force that has defied and toppled into the dust a great military empire which for 500 years had terrorised Europe and been a running sore in its side. There is hardly a more startling and dramatic episode in history than the sudden emergence of the Balkan League and the changes that it k likely to work on the map of Europe. Perhaps the most notable thing in connection with it is that it sho\vs us once again the potency of the moral ideal. We were beginning to believe in mere brute force—in the vastness of armies and fleets, in the power and precision of guns and bullets. Wo were in danger' of forgetting that the most perfect mechanical equipments are no match for men horsed on spiritual passion. "In war," said Napoleon, "the moral is ts the material as three .to on-e :v " The -.Turks were trained

by German officers and armed with the most modern of. weapons j but as a people they were rotten morally. On the other hand, the Allies were inspired by o-feat memories and hopes. Says' the ' Nation' : The Great Balkan victories are tJic victories of an idea. The most powerful friends of the Allies are the invisible ones. They are Exultations, agonies, And !ov«, and man's unconquerable mild. To the same effect writes the London 'Star'*.

Let us read aright the meaning of this renascence of the little nations. It is a spiritual thing like the French Revolution. Behind it is the vision and faculty divine of races struggling to be free. We need not further pursue the subject in the politiral domain. The Certainty of Uncertainty there is written large on many a page of its history. Nor need we refer to the illustrations of it that might be gleaned in the field of religion. Here as elsewhere they arc not lei 6 numerous or less notable. ******* We may pass on to emphasise ihe point to which we have just been referring—viz., that it is the emergence of the moral or spiritual that upsets all calculations. It is impossible to tell what may happen, if this swells out into life and power. A recent writer discusses suggestively what he calls the "Unorganised Forces." He points out that over against, or perhaps within, the t visible and the tangible and the status quo there is a region of forces unseen, formless, without exchequer or linked battalions or complicated machinery —a region, nevertheless, that is perpetually menacing the ease and. immobility of the established order. It is thefo invisible forces that both, the present and the future have got to reckon with. They have to be looked for not in the material, but in the moral—in the recesses of the spirit and the spiritual world. It is, as we have seen, these forces that have changed in a week or two the map of Europe and. introduced amazement, if nob bewilderment, into the diplomacies of the great empires. It is these same forces that the other day exploded in China, blowing the old customs and creeds of that immemorial country to atoms in a few months. But are these seemingly intangible and unreckonable forces really unorganised? Is there no Power or Person presiding over them and directing their origin and issue? We need not now enter upon that question further than to say that the trend of modern thought compels its more and more to answer it in the affirmative. It is not possible to believe that the whole long evolution of man from the Amoeba to the hero and the saint is a blind, lawless thing. Call thai unseen Power by what name we will, It or He is there. That the world does not v • fall into chao6—that it advances instead into ever higher forms of purpose and beauty —is because that Power never ceases its operation, ******* And so as we face the New Year the. Certainty of Uncertainty may be at once a warning and a hope. It may he a warning : it may help to assure us that we cannot calculate definitely upon anything. Science and philosophy preach to us orderly sequence. But it will be well to remember that life refuses to be bound up in the traces of their laws, and that what we call contingencies, fortuitousness, surprises, and upsetting of what seems most stable and certain are part of the order of things, and may be calculated to break in at most unexpected times and places. It may be also a hope, an inspiration. There are things which lie ahead that perhaps disquiet or dismay us. But who can assure us that they are certain to eventuate? Has it not almout reached the dignity of a proverb that the worst fears are those that never happen? The clouds that wo so much dread may turn out to be full of sunshine, or not existent at all. Tho stone wall that seems to bar the way may suddenly disclose a passage when we come up to it. A door may open to let us through into unexpected light and life. And so the message of the Certainty of Uncertainty bids us therefore concentrate on the duty of the immediate moment. The future is veiled ; the present only belongs to us. One day at a time! That's all it can be. No faster than that is_ the hardest fate; And days have their limit*, however we Besin them too early and. stretch them "late. One day at a time! It's a wholesome rhyme—■ A good one to live by: A day at a time.