This performance will go on unaltered until it is realized that the most extreme principle of aesthetic can never be of value to the future, but only to the past.  No such theory of principle can be laid down for those things which lie beyond, in the realm of the immaterial.  That which has no material existence cannot be subjected to a material classification.  That which belongs to the spirit of the future can only be realized in feeling, and to this feeling the talent of the artist is the only road.  Theory is the lamp which sheds light on the petrified ideas of yesterday and of the more distant past. [Footnote:  Cf.  Chapter VII.] And as we rise higher in the triangle we find that the uneasiness increases, as a city built on the most correct architectural plan may be shaken suddenly by the uncontrollable force of nature.  Humanity is living in such a spiritual city, subject to these sudden disturbances for which neither architects nor mathematicians have made allowance.  In one place lies a great wall crumbled to pieces like a card house, in another are the ruins of a huge tower which once stretched to heaven, built on many presumably immortal spiritual pillars.  The abandoned churchyard quakes and forgotten graves open and from them rise forgotten ghosts.  Spots appear on the sun and the sun grows dark, and what theory can fight with darkness?  And in this city live also men deafened by false wisdom who hear no crash, and blinded by false wisdom, so that they say “our sun will shine more brightly than ever and soon the last spots will disappear.”  But sometime even these men will hear and see.

But when we get still higher there is no longer this bewilderment.  There work is going on which boldly attacks those pillars which men have set up.  There we find other professional men of learning who test matter again and again, who tremble before no problem, and who finally cast doubt on that very matter which was yesterday the foundation of everything, so that the whole universe is shaken.  Every day another scientific theory finds bold discoverers who overstep the boundaries of prophecy and, forgetful of themselves, join the other soldiers in the conquest of some new summit and in the hopeless attack on some stubborn fortress.  But “there is no fortress that man cannot overcome.”

On the one hand, facts are being established which the science of yesterday dubbed swindles.  Even newspapers, which are for the most part the most obsequious servants of worldly success and of the mob, and which trim their sails to every wind, find themselves compelled to modify their ironical judgements on the “marvels” of science and even to abandon them altogether.  Various learned men, among them ultra-materialists, dedicate their strength to the scientific research of doubtful problems, which can no longer be lied about or passed over in silence. [Footnote:  Zoller, Wagner, Butleroff (St. Petersburg), Crookes (London), etc.; later on, C. H. Richet, C. Flammarion.  The Parisian paper Le Matin, published about two years ago the discoveries of the two last named under the title “Je le constate, mais je ne l’explique pas.”  Finally there are C. Lombroso, the inventor of the anthropological method of diagnosing crime, and Eusapio Palladino.]