CHAPTER II

THROUGH LOSS OF THE SENSE OF RELATION

AND PROPORTION

I HAVE often thought that the world would be a better place if every one born into it were compelled to study elementary geometry. To have passed safely across the Pons Asinorum would perhaps convince some, who, for want of this knowledge, would do much mischief in the course of their lives, that all valuations are worthless, except those that are the result of mental comparison, since even the proof of the measurement of tangible things is not physical, but mental. "Undoubtedly," says Swift, "philosophers are in the right when they tell us that nothing is great or little otherwise than by comparison." This is the true significance of Gulliver's Travels, which is not merely an

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1 See Selections from his Prose Writings, p. 117.

amusing satire on human life, but a very profound lesson that to the unabsolute mind nothing can be absolute, and only a balance of result can be obtained by comparison. This also is the teaching of Abbot's Flatland, that most witty, but little known, exemplification of how easily the conditions of life may be altered by altering their relationship.

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The idea that the mind can conceive absolute Justice or absolute Beauty seems to have led even Plato astray; for although he teaches that all thought proceeds by comparison, yet when he says "Things must inevitably appear in a certain sense both fair and foul, both just and unjust, both holy and unholy, as double things may be considered halves just as well as doubles," he does not perceive that the solution of these conflicting properties of all earthly things is not reference to an unattainable celestial Absolute, but the calculation of a terrestrial Resultant.

Whether we wish it or not, the relationship

1 The Republic, Bk. v, 479, and Bk. vii, 523–525. 2 Ibid, p. 195.

of things reigns supreme, even in every-day life. To the eyes of an infant everything appears on one plane, and the moon just as near to it as its rattle. The idea of distance is only revealed to it when the sense of touch enables it to compare the distance of one thing with that of another. In like manner, it is said that the eyes of a horse magnify, whereby human beings appear to him monstrous and terrible; and though there is here present a fallacy, since, in that case, other horses must appear to him proportionately great, and therefore men proportionately small, yet it must, nevertheless, be true that there is no such thing as absolute size, but that every object appears to the beholder of such a size as his optical vision represents it; in other words size depends on the relation of sight to the thing seen.

Thus nothing can be defined without reference to comparison; any attempt to the contrary results in nonsense. The remark that is commonly made by persons who wish to appear clever, that the world

is mad, comes into this category; because if it were true, there could be no madness, seeing that insanity in this popular sense has no existence except by comparison with the average or normal condition of mankind, which we call sanity. The school books also afford a good instance of the consequence of a false comparison, when they speak of islands as portions of land surrounded by water; inasmuch as all land is surrounded by water; wherefore all countries are islands. The true comparison aimed at is simply one of dimension.

In fact, all knowledge depends on the study of the true relation of one thing to another and the making a just comparison; thence arise sound deductions.

All the best results of Science have been obtained by the mutual association and relationship of its different departments; the one condition of success being that the subjects for comparison should be considered by a trained mind and an imaginative faculty.

Hence it follows that Matthew Arnold is surely in error when he says that "Philo

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sophy has her own independent sphere, and Theology hers, and neither has the right to invade and try to subdue the other.' Nothing has its own independent sphere, nothing is unrelated; and the value of every department of human thought depends upon the correctness of the synthesis which brings it into contact and comparison with every other. That habit which has induced men to pigeon-hole their ideas in the same way as they do their papers has arisen from mere convenience, which must not be confused with wisdom. Few men, perhaps, can or will make time for a systematic study of deductive logic-"the science of the relations implied by the inclusions, exclusions, and overlappings of classes"; " but they might at least avoid this ridiculous process of treating everything appertaining to human life as if it were a distinct entity. The man who keeps his Religion in a box and brings it out with his best hat on Sundays is, apart from any question of morals, no less ridicu

1 Essays in Criticism, pp. 372-373.

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2 The Study of Sociology, by Herbert Spencer, p. 222.