Alexander Moszkowski

“ He is imagined like Tycho Brahe to be surrounded by unusual pieces of apparatus, spying through the ocular of a long range refractor into the universe, seeking to unravel its ultimate secrets. The true picture does not correspond to this fancy in the slightest. Nothing in the make-up of the room reminds one of super-earthly sublimity, no abundance of instruments or books is to be seen, and one soon becomes aware that here a thinker reigns whose only requirement for his work, which encompasses the world, is his own mind, plus a sheet of paper and a pencil. ”

“ We have been born with, or have inherited, the idea of a straight and ever-advancing path in space, and we become filled with the utmost astonishment if some one asks us to believe that if we undertake a voyage in one direction out into the universe, beyond Sirius and a million times farther, we should finally arrive at our starting-point again, although we had not changed our direction. But the macro-being, who belongs to a universe of higher dimensions and who looks on our world as we looked on the above spherical world one foot in diameter, sees the narrowness of our view. ”

“ To us average beings a Utopia may disclose itself, a short frenzy of joy followed by a cold douche: Einstein stands above it as the pure searcher, who is interested only in the scientific fact, and who, even at the first knowledge of it, preserves its essentially theoretical importance from attempts to apply it practically. If, then, another wishes to hammer out into a fantastic gold-leaf what he has produced as a little particle of gold in his physical investigations, he offers no opposition to such thought-experiments, for one of the deepest traits of his nature is tolerance. ”

“ But he bows his head to sculpture, and, for him, architecture is a goddess. It is again his deeply rooted piety that asserts itself when memory recalls to him the Gothic dome with its pinnacles striving towards heaven. Goethe and Schlegel have called architecture "frozen music," and this picture is present in his mind when he sees Gothic architecture as frozen music of Bach. It is open to anyone to analyse this specific impression in another way by seeking the fundamental elements, in which the essence of the art is to provide support for a weighty structure and to overcome gravitation. ”

“ But may not some of this glory be reflected on to scientific discovery? When we are in an ecstasy of admiration, we talk of a creative act as of something divine; may we not also grant to the scientist this tribute which, owing to a slight confusion of conceptions, we shower on the artists? And I believe that Einstein's definition does not set up an insuperable barrier in this respect to our admiration, which exerts every effort to pass beyond, refuses to come to a standstill before the rigid fact that the discoverer reveals only what is preformed ”

“ One would have to investigate—as far as this is possible—in how far each outstanding personality was in advance of his time, whether some contemporary might not have had the equal good fortune to stumble on the same discovery, and whether, indeed, the time had not come when it must inevitably have been revealed. If we then further selected only those who saw far beyond their own age into the inimitable future of knowledge, this great number of celebrities would be considerably diminished. ”

“ But Einstein left his seat, and, taking up a position in front of his series of portraits on the wall, he meditatively passed his hand through his hair, and declared:
"In my opinion the greatest creative geniuses are Galilei and Newton, whom I regard in a certain sense as forming a unity. And in this unity Newton is he who has achieved the most imposing feat in the realm of science. These two were the first to create a system of mechanics founded on a few laws and giving a general theory of motions, the totality of which represents the events of our world." ”

“ Even here I should like to state that the range of Einstein's genius extends much further than is generally surmised by those who have busied themselves only with the actual physical theory. It sends out rays in all directions, and brings into view wonderful cosmic features under his stimulus—features which are, of course, embedded in the very refractory mathematical shell of his physics which embraces the whole world. But only minds of the distant future, perhaps, will be in a position to realize that all our mental knowledge is illuminated by the light of his doctrine. ”

“ There can be no doubt but that Einstein has a claim to be heard as an authority on these questions. There are few in the realm of the learned in whose faces it is so clearly manifest that they are called to excite a desire for knowledge by means of the living word, and to satisfy this desire. If great audiences assemble around him, if so many foreign academies open their arms to him to make him their own, these are not only signs of a magnetic influence that emanates from the famous discoverer, but they are indications that he is far famed as a teacher with a captivating personality. ”

“ It is possible, in fact, to a certain degree probable, that we shall by means of astronomy discover new worlds far beyond the limits of the region so far investigated, but no discovery can ever lead us beyond the continuum described above, just as little as a discoverer of the plane-world would ever succeed in making discoveries beyond his own world. Thus we must reckon with the finitude of our universe, and the question of regions beyond it can be discussed no further, for it leads only to imaginary possibilities for which science has not the slightest use. ”

“ If we were again to make the duration of human life a thousand times longer still, and hence the rate of life a thousand times slower still, we should, during the whole of an ordinary year, be able to have only 190 distinct perceptions, so that the difference between day and night would vanish entirely, and the sun's path would be a glowing circular band in the heavens, and all changes of form that seem to us to happen quietly and regularly, and to preserve a certain permanency, would melt together in the wild stream of happening, engulfed in its onward rush. ”

“ On another occasion a space-problem dealing with dress came up for discussion: Can a properly dressed man divest himself of his waistcoat without first taking off his coat? One would not have dared to confront Copernicus or Laplace with such a problem. Einstein at once attacked it with enthusiasm, as if it were an exercise in mechanics, the body being the object; he solved it in a trice, practically, with a little energetic manipulation, much to the amazement and joy of the beholder, who asked himself: Is this the same Einstein who developed the work of Copernicus and Newton? ”

“ In discovering, what has to be constructed persists, and in inventing, it is a question of finding the path along which there is the promise of success, be it by a method, a proof, or by some general work. We spoke of works of art, and I was delighted to see that Einstein was by no means disinclined to claim certain works of pure thought, which are usually placed in the category of scientific discovery, as works of art. In the latter, however, the pure process of invention plays the prominent part, for in them something is represented that did not exist at all before ”

“ Whoever aims at becoming thoroughly familiar with Einstein's new world-system finds that the study of the theory claims so much attention that there is scarcely a possibility left of proceeding to an ultimate philosophical analysis. And whoever is absorbed only by the desire of making philosophic investigations soon enough arrives at border-lines of thought, at which his conscience warns him to beware of insufficient scientific knowledge. He will be attacked by doubts as to whether he has properly understood the theory. ”

“ My reason for asking is that the whole of natural science is a science of experience, and not merely something based on speculation. It might easily suggest itself to one that an elementary law like that of Galilei or Newton could be derived from our everyday experience. But, if this is the case, how is it that science had to wait so long before this simple fact was discovered? Experience is as old as the hills; why did the law of inertia not make its appearance at the very beginning, when Nature was first subjected to inquiry? ”

“ Truth comprises the greatest conceivable circle of ideas and passes far beyond the sphere of correctness, which deals only with measure-relations, and not with the things in themselves. If Einstein, as we learn, emphatically declares truth to be the only object of science, he means the strictly objective truth that is to be derived from Nature, the true relationship of phenomena and occurrences, independently of whether restless philosophy assigns a question mark to this ultimate objectivity. A great discoverer in the realm of Nature cannot and dare not proceed otherwise. ”

“ A fundamental and radical reform of our philosophy seems inevitable, particularly with respect to our conceptions of Space and Time, perhaps, too, even with respect to Infinity and Causality. Much dross will have to be sifted out of our old categories of thought and out of our world wisdom, which once served as material for fine structures. What will the finer ones look like that are to take their places in obedience to the command of physics? Who would care to take it upon himself to form an estimate? ”

“ In the new physics the velocity of light plays a decisive part as a world-constant. At first sight it would appear impossible for us to determine it and recognize its importance, if we had not at our disposal some organ which enabled us to become aware of optical phenomena.
But, as Einstein explained to me, even under such difficult circumstances, it would be possible to build up a science, for the reason that phenomena, as far as they are perceptible, may be transformed so that they become manifest to other senses if one sense should be absent. ”