British statesman (1848-1930)
The vanity of human wishes and the brevity of human life are immemorial themes of lamentation; nor do they become less lamentable when we extend our view from the individual to the race.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Theism and Humanism
There are for all men moments when the need for some general point of view becomes insistent; when neither labor, nor care, nor pleasure, nor idleness, nor habit will stop a man from asking how he is to regard the universe of reality, how he is to think of it as a whole, how he is to think of his own relation to it.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Theism and Humanism
But while we thank the mathematician for his aid in conquering Nature, we envy him his powers of understanding her. Though he deals, it would seem, entirely with abstractions, they are abstractions which, at his persuasion, supply the key to the profoundest secrets of the physical universe. He holds the clues to mazes where the clearest intellect, unaided, would wander hopelessly astray.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Theism and Humanism
Scientific curiosity hungers for a knowledge of causes; causes which are physical, and, if possible, measurable.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Theism and Humanism
The prestige of Western arts and science may assist the diffusion of Western morals, as it assists the diffusion of Western languages, or Western clothes.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Theism and Humanism
In giving up the attempt to combine dramatic music with dramatic representation, the oratorio freed itself at once from all these absurdities, and all these limitations. It ceased to be acting marred by singing; it became recitation glorified by music.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Essays and Addresses
What at first was the delight of nations declines by slow but inevitable gradation into the luxury, or the business, or even the vanity of a few. What once spoke in accents understood by all is now painfully spelt out by a small band of scholars. What was once read for pleasure is now read for curiosity. It becomes "an interesting illustration of the taste of a bygone age," a "remarkable proof of such and such a theory of aesthetics."
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Essays and Addresses
It is perfectly possible for a man, not a professed student, and who only gives to reading the leisure hours of a business life, to acquire such a general knowledge of the laws of nature and the facts of history that every great advance made in either department shall be to him both intelligible and interesting; and he may besides have among his familiar friends many a departed worthy whose memory is embalmed in the pages of memoir or biography. All this is ours for the asking. All this we shall ask for if only it be our happy fortune to love for its own sake the beauty and the knowledge to be gathered from books. And if this be our fortune, the world may be kind or unkind, it may seem to us to be hastening on the wings of enlightenment and progress to an imminent millennium, or it may weigh us down with the sense of insoluble difficulty and irremediable wrong; but whatever else it be, so long as we have good health and a good library, it can hardly be dull.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Lord Rector's Address, delivered at St. Andrews University, December 10, 1887
Few persons are prevented from thinking themselves right by the reflection that, if they be right, the rest of the world is wrong.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Theism and Humanism
Beauty is an ill-defined attribute of certain members of an ill-defined class; and for the class itself there is no very convenient name. We might describe its members as "objects of aesthetic interest" always bearing in mind that this description (as I use it) applies to objects of the most varying degrees of excellence—to the small as well as the great, the trifling as well as the sublime: to conjuring and dancing; to literature, art, and natural beauty.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Theism and Humanism
In the first place, history is not concerned to express beauty. I do not deny that a great historian, in narrating some heroic incident, may rival the epic and the saga. He may tell a tale which would be fascinating even if it were false. But such cases are exceptional, and ought to be exceptional. Directly it appears that the governing preoccupation of an historian is to be picturesque, his narrative becomes intolerable.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Theism and Humanism
In the meanwhile we must, I fear, suffer under a system of beliefs which is far short of rational perfection. But we need not acquiesce, and we should not be contented. Whether this state of affairs will ever be cured by the sudden flash of some great philosophic discovery is another matter.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Theism and Humanism
Races may accumulate accomplishments, yet remain organically unchanged. They may learn and they may forget, they may rise from barbarism to culture, and sink back from culture to barbarism, while through all these revolutions the raw material of their humanity varies never a bit.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Theism and Humanism
Science also deems perception to be the source of all our knowledge of external nature. But it regards it as something more, and different. For perception is itself a part of nature, a natural process, the product of antecedent causes, the cause of subsequent effects. It requires, therefore, like other natural facts, to be observed and explained; and it is the business of science to explain it.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Theism and Humanism
Now it must at once be conceded that Handel's genius is but faintly tinged with this special emotional color. He was an unrivalled master of direct and simple sentiment; of love, fear, triumph, mourning; of patriotism untroubled by scruples, and of religion that knows no doubts. But he was in no sense modern. He no more anticipated a succeeding age in the character of the emotions to which he sought to give expression than in the technical methods which he employed to express them. To many this may seem matter of regret. With some it is undoubtedly the cause why Handel's work arouses in them but a cold and imperfect sympathy. Yet for my own part I cannot wish it otherwise. To each stage in the long development of art there is an appropriate glory. I do not grudge it to those who are the first heralds of a new order of things, in whose work is visible the earliest flush of a fresh artistic dawn.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Essays and Addresses
For great as are the recent changes which have taken place in Western civilization, they have been almost entirely due to scientific discoveries, to industrial inventions, to commercial enterprise, to the occupation by Europeans of new Continents, to the slow and in the main consequential modification of our beliefs, ideas, and governing conceptions. But to these great causes of movement the State, in the cases to which I have referred, has contributed little but the external conditions under which individual effort has been able to operate unhindered—conditions consisting for the most part in a tolerable degree of security, and a tolerable degree of freedom; and the great political movements with which the historian chiefly concerns himself must be regarded as symptoms, rather than as causes, of the vital changes which have taken place.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Essays and Addresses
For what does historical interest require? Not merely "brute fact," but brute fact about beings who are more than animals, who look before and after, who dream about the past and hope about the future, who plan and strive and suffer for ends of their own invention; for ideals which reach far beyond the appetites and fears which rule the lives of their brother beasts. Such beings have a "natural history," but it is not with this that we are concerned. The history which concerns us is the history of self-conscious personalities, and of communities which are (in a sense) self-conscious also. Can the contemplative values which this possesses, especially in its most comprehensive shape, be regarded as independent of our world-outlook? Surely not.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Theism and Humanism
Things are not changed by a mere change of place, but a change of place relative to an observer always changes their appearance for him. Common sense is, therefore, compelled in this, as in countless other cases, to distinguish the appearance of a thing from its reality; and to hold, as an essential article of its working creed, that appearances may alter, leaving realities unchanged.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Theism and Humanism
It is true that love is rooted in appetite, and that appetite has a survival value which I, at least, cannot find in the purely contemplative emotions.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Theism and Humanism
Man inherits the capacity for loyalty, but not the use to which he shall put it. The persons and causes (if any) to which he shall devote himself are suggested to him, often, indeed, imposed upon him, by education and environment. Nevertheless, they are his by choice, not by hereditary compulsion. And his choice may be bad. He may unselfishly devote himself to what is petty or vile, as he may to what is generous and noble.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Theism and Humanism