THE TENDENCY OF HISTORY
377
that obviously brings into a direct sequence of cause and effect all
the phenomena of human history, we must accept it, and if we
accept it we must teach it. The mere fact that it overthrows social
organizations cannot affect our attitude. The rest of society can
reject or ignore, but we must follow the new light no matter where
it leads. Only about two hundred and fifty years ago the common
sense of mankind, supported by the authority of revealed religion,
affirmed the undoubted and self-evident fact that the sun moved
round the earth. Galileo suddenly asserted and proved that the
earth moved round the sun. You know what followed, and the
famous ."E pur si muove." Even if we, like Galileo, should be
obliged by the religious or secular authority to recant and repu–
diate our science, we should still have to say as he did in secret if
not in public, "E pu:J;" si muove."
Those of us who have reached or passed middle age need not
trouble ourselves very much about the future. We have seen one
or two great revolutions in thought and we
hav~
had enough. We
are not likely to accept any new theory that shall threaten to disturb
our repose. We should reject at once, and probably by a large
majority, a hypothetical science that must obviously be incapable
of proof. We should take the same attitude that our fathers took
toward the theories and hypotheses of Darwin. We may meantime
reply to such conundrums by the formula that has smoothed our
path in life over many disasters and cataclysms: "Perhaps the
crisis will never occur; and even if it does occur, we shall probably
be dead." To us who have already gone as far as we set out to go,
this answer is good and sufficient, but those who are to be the pro–
fessors and historians of the future have got duties and responsi–
bilities of a heavier kind than we older ones ever have had to carry.
They cannot afford to deal with such a question in such a spirit.
They would have to rejoin in Heine's words:
Also fragen wir bestiindig,
Bis man uns mit einer Handvoll
Erde endlich stopft die Mauler,
Aber is das eine Antwort?
They may at any time in the next fifty years be compelled to
find an answer, "Yes" or "No," under the pressure of the most
powerful organizations the world has ever known for the suppres–
sion of influences hostile to its safety.
If
this association should be
