The Sleepwalkers (253 page)

The
symptom
that
a
particular
branch
of
science
or
art
is
ripe
for
a
change
is
a
feeling
of
frustration
and
malaise,
not
necessarily
caused
by
any
acute
crisis
in
that
specific
branch
–
which
might
be
doing
quite
well
in
its
traditional
terms
of
reference
–
but
by
a
feeling
that
the
whole
tradition
is
somehow
out
of
step,
cut
off
from
the
mainstream,
that
the
traditional
criteria
have
become
meaningless,
divorced
from
living
reality,
isolated
from
the
integral
whole.
This
is
the
point
where
the
specialist's
hubris
yields
to
philosophical
soul-searching,
to
the
painful
reappraisal
of
his
basic
axioms
and
of
the
meaning
of
terms
which
he
had
taken
for
granted;
in
a
word,
to
the
thaw
of
dogma.
This
is
the
situation
which
provides
genius
with
the
opportunity
for
his
creative
plunge
under
the
broken
surface.

4.
Mystic and Savant

The
most
disturbing
aspect
of
this
story
of
separations
and
reintegrations,
the
one
to
which
I
have
been
constantly
harping
back,
concerns
the
mystic
and
the
savant.

At
the
beginning
of
this
long
journey,
I
quoted
Plutarch's
comment
on
the
Pythagoreans:
"The
contemplation
of
the
eternal
is
the
aim
of
philosophy,
as
the
contemplation
of
the
mysteries
is
the
aim
of
religion."
For
Pythagoras,
as
for
Kepler,
the
two
kinds
of
contemplation
were
twins;
for
them
philosophy
and
religion
were
motivated
by
the
same
longing:
to
catch
glimpses
of
eternity
through
the
window
of
time.
The
mystic
and
the
savant
jointly
satisfied
the
dual
urge
of
allaying
the
self's
cosmic
anxiety
and
of
transcending
its
limitations;
its
dual
need
for
protection
and
liberation.
They
provided
reassurance
by
explanation,
by
reducing
threatening,
incomprehensible
events
to
principles
familiar
to
experience:
lightning
and
thunder
to
temperamental
outbursts
of
man-like
gods,
eclipses
to
the
greed
of
moon-eating
pigs;
they
asserted
that
there
was
rhyme
and
reason,
a
hidden
law
and
order
behind
the
seemingly
arbitrary
and
chaotic
flux,
even
behind
the
death
of
a
child
and
the
eruption
of
a
volcano.
They
jointly
satisfied
man's
basic
need
and
voiced
his
basic
intuition,
that
the
universe
is
meaningful,
ordered,
rational
and
governed
by
some
form
of
justice,
even
if
its
laws
are
not
transparent.

Apart
from
reassuring
the
conscious
mind
by
investing
the
universe
with
meaning
and
value,
religion
acted
in
a
more
direct
manner
on
the
unconscious,
pre-rational
layers
of
the
self,
providing
it
with
intuitive
techniques
to
transcend
its
limitations
in
time
and
space
by
a
mystical
short-circuit,
as
it
were.
The
same
duality
of
approach
–
the
rational
and
the
intuitive
–
characterizes,
as
we
saw,
the
scientific
quest.
It
is
therefore
a
perverse
mistake
to
identify
the
religious
need
solely
with
intuition
and
emotion,
science
solely
with
the
logical
and
the
rational.
Prophets
and
discoverers,
painters
and
poets,
all
share
this
amphibial
quality
of
living
both
on
the
contoured
drylands
and
in
the
boundless
ocean.
In
the
history
of
the
race
as
of
the
individual,
both
branches
of
the
cosmic
quest
originate
in
the
same
source.
The
priests
were
the
first
astronomers;
the
medicine-men
were
both
prophets
and
physicians;
the
techniques
of
hunting,
fishing,
sowing
and
reaping
were
imbued
with
religious
magic
and
ritual.
There
was
division
of
labour
and
diversity
of
method
in
the
symbols
and
techniques,
but
unity
of
motive
and
purpose.

The
first
separation,
insofar
as
our
knowledge
of
history
goes,
occurred
between
Olympian
religion
and
Ionian
philosophy.
The
Ionians'
polite
atheism
reflected
the
degeneration
of
the
State
Religion
into
an
elaborate
and
specialized
ritual,
its
loss
of
cosmic
consciousness.
The
Pythagorean
synthesis
was
made
possible
by
the
loosening
up
of
that
rigid
theological
structure
through
the
mystic
revival
which
Orphism
brought
in
its
wake.
A
similar
situation
occurred
in
the
sixteenth
century,
when
the
religious
crisis
shook
up
medieval
theology,
and
enabled
Kepler
to
build
his
new
model
of
the
universe
ad
majorem
gloriam
Dei
–
that
short-lived
Neo-Pythagorean
union
of
mystic
inspiration
and
empirical
fact.