THE SENSE OF THE PAST
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means a flowing-in, but not as a tributary river flows into the main
stream at a certain observable point; historically the image is an
astrological one and the meanings which the Oxford Dictionary
gives all suggest "producing effects by
insensible
or
invisible
means"-the "infusion of any kind of divine, spiritual, moral,
immaterial or
secret
power or principle." Before the idea of
influence we ought to be far more puzzled than we are; if we
cannot conttive to be puzzled enough, we can induce the proper
state of uncertainty by asking ourselves, "What have been the
influences that made me the person I am?" Not that we ought to
be ready to give up the idea of influence but we ought to have a
notion of its vagueness. And that will give us a notion of what
value it has.
5. In short, we have to open our minds to the whole question
of causation in culture. Hume, who so shook our notions of causa–
tion in the physical sciences, raises some interesting questions of
causation in matters of culture. "There is no subject," he says, "in
which we must proceed with more caution than in tracing the his–
tory of the arts and sciences; lest we assign causes which never
existed and reduce what is merely contingent to stable and uni–
versa] principles." The cultivators of the arts are always few in
number and their minds delicate and "easily perverted." "Chance,
therefore, or secret and unknown causes, must have great influence
on the rise and progress of all refined arts." But there is one fact,
he says, which allows us to speculate and that is that the choice
spirits arise from and are related to the mass of people of their
time. "The question, therefore, is not altogether concerning the
taste, genius and spirit of a few, but concerning those of a whole
people; and may, therefore, be accounted for, in some measure, by
general causes and principles." This gives us our charter, but we
must see that it is a charter to deal with a mystery.
6. Yet another thing that we have not understood with suf–
ficient complication is the nature of ideas in their relation to the
conditions of their development and in relation to their transmis–
sion. Too often we conceive of an idea as being like the baton that
is handed from runner to runner in a relay race. But an idea is
rather like the sentence that, in the parlor game, is whispered about
in
a circle; the point of the game is the amusement that comes when
the last version is compared with the original.
