“Agreed. In your case, the removal and replacement of teeth. Anyway, dear Vinyals, things might have turned out worse for you. Your knowledge is based on the experimental method, a method endorsed by writers and universally praised. Nonetheless it is generally agreed that the results from this method are tentative and unsatisfactory, because man is presumptuous and science proceeds slowly and rarely lifts its head. In fact, my dear Vinyals, you apply the experimental method to toothaches and sore gums while simultaneously loving, dreaming, and even believing in spiritual things. Human beings harbor a confused mixture of the fantastic and the real. Can one separate the two? Fantasy may sow your thoughts with the seeds of madness but that doesn’t mean that reality supplies with you rock-hard certainties. Indeed, with every day that goes by you feel your knowledge of teeth becomes less and less secure. You know … Not very long ago, in my capacity as a journalist, I was invited to attend one of the largest congresses on physiology to be held in Europe over recent years. Physiology is one of the noblest and most important of sciences because it focuses on the lives of men and animals. I was invited as a journalist, not as a physiologist, through the good offices of friends of mine, daughters of the general secretary of the association. This afforded me the great pleasure of being able to hear in public and in private one of the great scientists of our era, Professor Stevenson from Cambridge, the discoverer, as everyone knows, of a most significant virulent and lethal microbe. The Professor is one of the most civilized men I have ever met. Modest, shrewd, and frugal, hostile to letting the magical or sacred into his life, he spoke of things as they are and was confident enough to tell the truth.
“ ‘Whenever I think of the circumstances in which I made my discovery’ — I heard Professor Stevenson remark to a German Nobel Prize winner — ‘I can’t help but recall the purely random elements that created that chance occurrence. After a terrible spate of very ugly, rude maids my wife took on a beautiful, virginal Scottish girl. I can’t find the words to tell you how that changed me and how blissful I felt. I like my peace and comfort but I also like to be surrounded by individuals who are physically attractive. My brain is soon wearied by the spectacle of the monstrous and can never find the strength to abandon the sterile world of moral dilemmas. I was transfigured, as they say, my brain began working overtime, my imagination was aroused and I felt an urgent need to return to my work and research. Only this ingenuous thing we call beauty can plunge us into the states of ingenuousness that are necessary if we are to believe what we are doing is essential. If you don’t tell yourself night and day that your puerile scientific activity is really essential, it soon becomes difficult to make any headway. Hope and imagination are vital. I discovered that microbe within a few days. I saw it moving in the preparation under my microscope while I was recalling the dark golden tresses of that Scottish maiden.’ ”
“You are incorrigibly destructive and have no respect for what is noble in life …”
“But that is what Professor Stevenson said in a moment of candor, and I have no reason to doubt it isn’t true. I will tell you something else this famous scientist said: ‘Sometimes I can’t help thinking,’ he said to those sitting near him during an official banquet, ‘about my scientific publications and professional work. You have probably forgotten how three awards have given the seal of official recognition to my activities. Indeed, the university department in question awarded me three artistic medals. Well, I shall now describe something that will probably shock you. I won the first medal by demonstrating a particular principle, the second by demonstrating the opposite principle, the third and final — the work behind my third medal that was my crowning moment — established irrefutably that the method I had pursued in the two previous pieces of work could only lead us down blind alleys.’ My dear Vinyals, as we are all aware, your knowledge as a dentist depends on physiology. And if physiology is what the professor says it is, then it is unlikely that your knowledge of teeth rests on rock-hard certainties.”
“I find you somewhat paradoxical and I can’t guess what you are really after. You hate everything we might call spiritualism or magic yet at the same time you haven’t a single good word to say for science. Do please tell me what you are really thinking?”
“Dear Vinyals, the month of March in London is usually cruel and harsh. This afternoon seems an exception: there is a touch of spring in the air. It is a warm afternoon, the park is delightful, and it’s a pleasure to converse. I am one of the few people in my country to oppose material progress. I have written against science and against scientists and have even risked cutting a ridiculous figure when stating what I thought was the truth. However, years have gone by and I believe I now see everything in a clearer light. I do regret writing those things not because science, in the meantime, has made any giant steps forward. Science always remains more or less where it was. Its findings are trifling in the extreme. I will go further: science very rarely produces a clear-cut result. Nevertheless I don’t wish to imply that one should speak of the poverty of science. Dear Vinyals, I believe it’s not the results of a particular science that count, it is the attitude behind them. True, it is hard not to see scientists as self-caricatures. They are typically bad-tempered, aging gentlemen who set out to climb the Alps clutching a box of flea poison. But that is the nature of the beast. Scientists unflinchingly challenge mystery and its lowest sentimental forms, and this is what makes them great. It is in humanity’s interest to destroy what is vulgar, magical, and sentimental. History demonstrates that one of the most uncontrollable sources of human sorrow is mystery and unreality. Men and women kill and torture each other for fantasies that aren’t worth a pipeful of tobacco. The most basic form of magic foments tyranny, and sentimentality hallows our rankest ignorance. This is why I like science although I don’t think it will ever get anywhere, and why I like scientists themselves, even though they wander miserably in the wilderness. But science never holds anything back, everything is wide-open. And that is what I believe to be essential.”
“Do you believe such things are so important? I would never have said …”
“Vinyals, dear Vinyals the dentist, these things are what is really important and what has always excited me. If you think for a moment with a modicum of insight, you will understand and I won’t need to explain further. If you reflect on what has most influenced you in the course of your life, you will soon realize that it is shot through with sentimentality and vulgar errors. The most intelligent men can, with the utmost difficulty, shed that baggage. In my travels through the world, I have met one really outstanding man. I refer to Professor Turull the renowned writer and accomplished humanist. Physically he was yellow as tallow and thin as a rake. You’d often see him in bookshops and if you ever conversed with him he came across as good-natured and mild, although he possessed that acid, stubbornly sardonic manner intellectuals often have. He was very studious and worked tirelessly. He wrote very well, in a style that was fluent, elegant, lapidary, and taut. His huge memory seemed to encompass the most vivid recreation of the ancient world, one that was not seen through rose-tinted glasses, but a much more complex vision that included the murky areas where anguish and passion rub shoulders. He embellished this knowledge with vast humanist erudition, erudition that enabled him to live a tranquil life and fill his days with scientific order and wise conversation. He was poor, wore a shiny black jacket, threadbare pants, and his knobbly knees and elbows stuck out like lumps of pig iron. He was always short of money and spent his life begging and writing highly obsequious letters to people in high places. He liked to eat well and would turn pale and twitch his fat nose at the bouquet from a glass of vintage wine. He had a traditional kind of maid and when he had the money she cooked him a range of exquisite dishes. I have never ever eaten Catalan-style broad beans with so much relish and insight as in the dining room of that celebrated and erudite professor. Moreover, he always followed up with delicious coffee and, generally speaking, liqueurs and tobacco that showed his excellent taste. He was a civilized man.”