since a plurality of points of view, somehow comparable, must be assumed
in the beginning, as well as common principles of projection, and ulterior
points of contact or coincidence. Such assumptions, which must persist
throughout, seem to presuppose an absolute system of nature behind all the
relative systems of science.

The other circumstance which points to further revolutions is social. The
new science is unintelligible to almost all of us; it can be tested only
by very delicate observations and very difficult reasoning. We accept it
on the authority of a few professors who themselves have accepted it with
a contagious alacrity, as if caught in a whirlwind. It has sprung up
mysteriously and mightily, like mysticism in a cloister or theology in a
council: a Soviet of learned men has proclaimed it. Moreover, it is not
merely a system among systems, but a movement among movements. A system,
even when it has serious rivals, may be maintained for centuries as
religions are maintained, institutionally; but a movement comes to an end;
it is followed presently by a period of assimilation which transforms it,
or by a movement in some other direction. I ask myself accordingly whether
the condition of the world in the coming years will be favourable to
refined and paradoxical science. The extension of education will have
enabled the uneducated to pronounce upon everything. Will the patronage of
capital and enterprise subsist, to encourage discovery and reward
invention? Will a jealous and dogmatic democracy respect the
unintelligible insight of the few? Will a perhaps starving democracy
support materially its Soviet of seers? But let us suppose that no
utilitarian fanaticism supervenes, and no intellectual surfeit or
discouragement. May not the very profundity of the new science and its
metaphysical affinities lead it to bolder developments, inscrutable to the
public and incompatible with one another, like the gnostic sects of
declining antiquity? Then perhaps that luminous modern thing which until