Perhaps music is in the Fourth Dimension. Time may be in two dimensions. Heraclitus before Bergson compared Time to a river always flowing, yet a permanent river: if we emerged from this stream at a certain moment and entered it an hour later, would it not signify that Time has two dimensions. And where does music stand in the eternal scheme of things? Are not harmony with its vertical structure and melody with its horizontal flow proof that music is another dimension in Time? Miss Williams's notion of the Fourth Spatial Dimension is a spiritual one. Creative Involution is to supersede the Darwinian evolution. Again, the interior revolution described for our salvation in the epistles of the Apostle Paul. All roads lead to religion. Expel religion forcibly and it returns under strange disguises, usually as debasing superstitions. Yet religion without dogma is like a body without a skeleton--it can't be made to stand upright.
Mathematicians are poets, and religion is the poetry of the poor, just as philosophy is the diversion of professors. Modern science, said Mallock, put out the footlights of life's stage when it denied religion. But matter, in the light of recent experiment, is become spirit, energy, anything but gross matter. Tyndall might have to revise the conclusions of his once famous Belfast address in the presence of radium. Remy de Gourmont said that the essential thing is to search the eternal in the diverse and fleeting movements of form. From a macrocosmic monster our gods are become microcosmic; god may be a molecule, a cell. A god to put in a phial; thus far has the zigzag caprice of theory attained. And religion is "a sum of scruples which impede the free exercise of our faculties," says Salomon Reinach in Orpheus. Bossuet did not write his Variations in vain. All is vanity, even doctrinal fluctuations. Goethe has warned us that "Man is not born to solve the mystery of Existence; but he must nevertheless attempt it, in order that he may learn how to keep within the limits of the Knowable." Goethe detested all "thinking about thought." Spinoza was his only philosophical recreation.
Man must no longer be egocentric. The collective soul is born. The psychology of the mob, according to Professor Le Bon, is different from the psychology of the individual. We know this from the mental workings of a jury. Twelve otherwise intelligent men put in a jury-box contaminate each other's will so that their united judgment is, as a rule, that of a full-fledged imbecile. Mark Twain noted this in his accustomed humorous (a mordant humour) fashion, adding that trial by jury was all very well in the time of Alfred the Great, candle-clocks, and small communities. Miss Williams, who sees salvation for the single soul in the collective soul--not necessarily socialistic--nevertheless warns parents against the dangers in our public-school system, where the individuality of the child is so often disturbed, if not destroyed, by class teaching. Mob psychology is always false psychology. The crowd obliterates the ego. Yet to collective consciousness may belong the future. It is all very well for Mallock to call war the glorification, the result, and the prop of limited class interests. (This was years ago.) Stately, sedate, stable is the class that won't tolerate war; a class of moral lollipops. War we must have; it is one of the prime conditions of struggling existence. As belief in some totem, fetich, taboo is the basis of all superstitions, so the superstition of yesterday builds the cathedrals of faith to-day. (Read Frazer's Golden Bough--James Frazer, who is the Darwin of Social Anthropology.) Happiness requires limitations, as a wine needs a glass to hold it; and if patriotism is a crime of lèse-majesty against mankind, then be it so. But like the poor, war and patriotism are precious essences in the scheme of life, and we shall always have them with us. However, the warning of Miss Williams is a timely one. At school our children's souls are clogged with bricks and mortar, instead of being buoyant and individual.