The world as I see it - Albert Einstein (easy books to read .txt) 📗

in their aims and habits of thought. The secret of this
success lies not only in his swift comprehension of people and things and
his marvellous command of language, but above all in this, that one feels
that his whole heart is in the business in hand, and that, when he is at
work, he has room for nothing else in his mind. Nothing disarms the
recalcitrant so much as this.

Before the war Lorentz's activities in the cause of international
relations were confined to presiding at congresses of physicists.
Particularly noteworthy among these were the Solvay Congresses, the first
two of which were held at Brussels in 1909 and 1912. Then came the European
war, which was a crushing blow to all who had the improvement of human
relations in general at heart. Even before the war was over, and still more
after its end, Lorentz devoted himself to the work of reconciliation. His
efforts were especially directed towards the re-establishment of fruitful
and friendly co-operation between men of learning and scientific societies.
An outsider can hardly conceive what uphill work this is. The accumulated
resentment of the war period has not yet died down, and many influential men
persist in the irreconcilable attitude into which they allowed themselves to
be driven by the pressure of circumstances. Hence Lorentz's efforts resemble
those of a doctor with a recalcitrant patient who refuses to take the
medicines carefully prepared for his benefit.

But Lorentz is not to be deterred, once he has recognized a course of
action as the right one. The moment the war was over, he joined the
governing body of the "Conseil de recherche," which was founded by the
savants of the victorious countries, and from which the savants and learned
societies of the Central Powers were excluded. His object in taking this
step, which caused great offence to the academic world of the Central
Powers, was to influence this institution in such a way that it could be
expanded into something truly international. He and other right-minded men
succeeded, after repeated efforts, in securing the removal of the offensive
exclusion-clause from the statutes of the "Conseil." The goal, which is the
restoration of normal and fruitful co-operation between learned societies,
is, however, not yet attained, because the academic world of the Central
Powers, exasperated by nearly ten years of exclusion from practically all
international gatherings, has got into a habit of keeping itself to itself.
Now, however, there are good grounds for hoping that the ice will soon be
broken, thanks to the tactful efforts of Lorentz, prompted by pure
enthusiasm for the good cause.

Lorentz has also devoted his energies to the service of international
cultural ends in another way, by consenting to serve on the League of
Nations Commission for international intellectual co-operation, which was
called into existence some five years ago with Bergson as chairman. For the
last year Lorentz has presided over the Commission, which, with the active
support of its subordinate, the Paris Institute, is to act as a go-between
in the domain of intellectual and artistic work among the various spheres of
culture. There too the beneficent influence of this intelligent, humane, and
modest personality, whose unspoken but faithfully followed advice is, "Not
mastery but service," will lead people in the right way.

May his example contribute to the triumph of that spirit !


In Honour of Arnold Berliner's Seventieth Birthday

(Arnold Berliner is the editor of the periodical Die
Naturrvissenschaften.)

I should like to take this opportunity of telling my friend Berliner
and the readers of this paper why I rate him and his work so highly. It has
to be done here because it is one's only chance of getting such things said;
since our training in objectivity has led to a taboo on everything personal,
which we mortals may transgress only on quite exceptional occasions such as
the present one.

And now, after this dash for liberty, back to the objective! The
province of scientifically determined fact has been enormously extended,
theoretical knowledge has become vastly more profound in every department of
science. But the assimilative power of the human intellect is and remains
strictly limited. Hence it was inevitable that the activity of the
individual investigator should be confined to a smaller and smaller section
of human knowledge. Worse still, as a result of this specialization, it is
becoming increasingly difficult for even a rough general grasp of science as
a whole, without which the true spirit of research is inevitably
handicapped, to keep pace with progress. A situation is developing similar
to the one symbolically represented in the Bible by the story of the Tower
of Babel. Every serious scientific worker is painfully conscious of this
involuntary relegation to an ever-narrowing sphere of knowledge, which is
threatening to deprive the investigator of his broad horizon and degrade him
to the level of a mechanic.

We have all suffered under this evil, without making any effort to
mitigate it. But Berliner has come to the rescue, as far as the
German-speaking world is concerned, in the most admirable way: He saw that
the existing popular periodicals were sufficient to instruct and stimulate
the layman; but he also saw that a first-class, well-edited organ was needed
for the guidance of the scientific worker who desired to be put sufficiently
au courant of developments in scientific problems, methods, and results to
be able to form a judgment of his own. Through many years of hard work he
has devoted himself to this object with great intelligence and no less great
determination, and done us all, and science, a service for which we cannot
be too grateful.

It was necessary for him to secure the co-operation of successful
scientific writers and induce them to say what they had to say in a form as
far as possible intelligible to non-specialists. He has often told me of the
fights he had in pursuing this object, the difficulties of which he once
described to me in the following riddle: Question : What is a scientific
author? Answer: A cross between a mimosa and a porcupine.* Berliner's
achievement would have been impossible but for the peculiar intensity of his
longing for a clear, comprehensive view of the largest possible area of
scientific country. This feeling also drove him to produce a text-book of
physics, the fruit of many years of strenuous work, of which a medical
student said to me the other day: "I don't know how I should ever have got a
clear idea of the principles of modern physics in the time at my disposal
without this book."

Berliner's fight for clarity and comprehensiveness of outlook has done
a great deal to bring the problems, methods, and results of science home to
many people's minds. The scientific life of our time is simply inconceivable
vzthout his paper. It is just as important to make knowledge live and to
keep it alive as to solve specific problems. We are all conscious of what we
owe to Arnold Berliner.

*Do not be angry with me for this indiscretion, my dear Berliner. A
serious-minded man enjoys a good laugh now and then.

Popper-Lynhaus was more than a brilliant engineer and writer. He was
one of the few outstanding personalities who embody the conscience of a
generation. He has drummed it into us that society is responsible for the
fate of every individual and shown us a way to translate the consequent
obligation of the community into fact. The community or State was no fetish
to him; he based its right to demand sacrifices of the individual entirely
on its duty to give the individual personality a chance of harmonious
development.


Obituary of the Surgeon, M. Katzenstein

During the eighteen years I spent in Berlin I had few close friends,
and the closest was Professor Katzenstein. For more than ten years I spent
my leisure hours during the summer months with him, mostly on his delightful
yacht. There we confided our experiences, ambitions, emotions to each other.
We both felt that this friendship was not only a blessing because each
understood the other, was enriched by him, and found ins him that responsive
echo so essential to anybody who is truly alive; it also helped to make both
of us more independent of external experience, to objectivize it more
easily.

I was a free man, bound neither by many duties nor by harassing
responsibilities; my friend, on the contrary, was never free from the grip
of urgent duties and anxious fears for the fate of those in peril. If, as
was invariably the case, he had performed some dangerous operations in the
morning, he would ring up on the telephone, immediately before we got into
the boat, to enquire after the condition of the patients about whom he was
worried; I could see how deeply concerned he was for the lives entrusted to
his care. It was marvellous that this shackled outward existence did not
clip the wings of his soul; his imagination and his sense of humour were
irrepressible. He never became the typical conscientious North German, whom
the Italians in the days of their