Pascal observed profoundly: ‘The series of men may be considered as a single man, living for ever and continuously learning.’
Since furthest prehistory, man had found no explanation of the properties and structure of matter; and, so far as energy was concerned, he only knew, or only used, the force of his muscles and the labour of animals. But now suddenly, with Lavoisier, and after Papin, he discovered the mystery and mechanical force of fire. One by one, the secrets contained in inanimate or living bodies opened before his mind and provided means of action. Thus the breach was made by which he could escape from his neolithic conditions. And already he could confusedly glimpse the possibility, no longer of seizing by magic but of rationally harnessing, the inexhaustible powers of nature to exploit the future which history was at that moment revealing to him.
Thanks to the fortunate conjunction of three discoveries—discovery of the gradual succession of living forms, destined soon to culminate in the theories of evolution; discovery of energies, a prelude to the modern conquests of space and the ‘ether’; discovery of a sense of humanity, awkwardly expressed in the democratic awakening of the masses—there arose in man, at the dawn of the nineteenth century, the notion of an organic duration open to all the ambitions of the sociologist, the engineer, and the scientist.
Instinctively so far, Man had followed his inner urge to explore nature without proper understanding. He had found various provisional explanations for the implacable need of knowledge which haunted him and gave him a vague sense of growth. Now at last he could define it and justify it rationally. No longer only to know out of curiosity, to know for knowing’s sake, but to know out of faith in a universal development which was becoming conscious of itself in the human spirit, to know in order to create, to know in order to be.
The religion of science is dead. To take over from it, there must be a new mysticism.
Each one of us is a conscious and responsible unit in a universe in progress.
In order to sustain and extend the huge, invincible, and legitimate effort of research in which the vital weight of human activity is at present engaged, a faith, a mysticism is necessary.