The Andrey Avinoff Foundation

Go to the

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By Andrey Avinoff

"Go to the ant, thou sluggard, consider her ways and be wise!"
—Scriptural account of Solomon

These words of the ancient prophet-king not only echo the wisdom of age-
old proverbs but they contain, in the present state of human society imperiled as it is by fresh disturbances, a timely challenge as well. By considering the ways of the ant we can certainly learn a few helpful lessons in the virtues of industry, co-operation, courage, and devotion to duty.

Belonging to the same general division of the insect world as the family of bees and wasps, ants have reached the pinnacle of perfect social organization among living things. This pinnacle might be contested by the second-best group in the art of well-organized society—namely, the termites, those ingenious kinsfolk of the homely cockroach—but as far as elaboration and variety of collective functions are concerned, the ant is the champion of versatile efficiency in a social system that endured for many millions of years before the advent of mankind. It would be entirely futile to attempt a description of even the most fundamental aspects in the organization of ant communities within the scope of a brief article. Allusions can only be made to some of the most striking features, for the literature on this subject is enormous.
Among American authors, reference should be made to the enlightening contributions of the late Professor W. H. Wheeler, who devoted his life-long efforts and brilliant scholarship to the study of ants. The more deeply scientists penetrate into the details of ant life, the more amazing and baffling become their findings. A panorama of a strange world unfolds itself before the observer.
Ants are equally efficient in peaceful occupations and in war. Their nests, honeycombed with labyrinths of galleries, passages, subterranean chambers, and complicated superstructures are veritable cities teeming with intense activities and governed by faultless order. The foundation of a community is laid by the queen, who loses her wings after the nuptial flight and settles as the matriarch of the whole forthcoming population. Different castes of individuals are produced, specifically adapted for their direct functions. While the queen raises with her own efforts the larvae of the original brood, the first generation of workers, upon reaching maturity, takes charge of feeding her and the rest of the colony.

In an ant colony there are several specialized castes. The structure of the workers differs from the anatomical equipment of the warriors, who are provided with powerful jaws and pugnacious dispositions as befit the defenders of the stronghold. The workers attend to all needs of the household, including the digging of intricate corridors, and the gathering of food.
As depicted in the nursery and "cattle-ranch" group, in the various chambers are kept the young ants, which pass through the regular stages of eggs, larvae, and pupae. The immature brood is attended by the nurses, who among their many tasks must observe that the right temperature and degree of humidity is maintained in the galleries as is necessary for the normal development of the young. The whole batch of eggs, larvae, or pupae is accordingly carried from one compartment to another for proper air conditioning of the nursery, in accordance with the changes of weather outside and the state of moisture in the nest.

But ants not only attend to the needs of their own kind, certain species raise their own cattle— diminutive insects kept in captivity for the sake of their ability to produce a sweet secretion much relished by their masters. They mostly belong to the family of plant lice that were aptly called by Linnaeus, the father of modern natural history, "ant dairy cattle." Carefully raised from the egg, they are provided with appropriate pastures either on roots cleared for this purpose in the subterranean galleries, or are kept grazing on grass blades and branches that are often protected by the shelter of weatherproof galleries specially constructed by the ants.
Equally astounding is the proficiency of certain ants in cultivating mushrooms that are grown in subterranean galleries in abundant spongelike clusters as food for the colony. The fungus develops in ways that are not customary for related species in normal conditions. It is assumed that certain peculiarities of the plant have developed through the influence of cultivation and selection on the part of the ants. These mushroom forms do not show the peculiar characteristics of kohlrabi heads unless the culture is attended by the ants in their subterranean haunts.

The continuity in cultivating mushrooms is another astounding detail of the life of ants of this particular group. The queen who founds the colony carries with her a pellet of earth from the mushroom garden of her origin. This spore-bearing particle is laid as the foundation of a new garden that is cultivated with the same care as the incipient colony. In order to assure the growth of the fungi the queen does not hesitate to crush a goodly number of eggs to provide the fertile soil needed for the spreading of the myscelium. It should be mentioned that in an ant nest the fungi are never permitted to attain the stare of a full grown mushroom, but are kept artificially in a spongelike state. A fully developed fungus garden is usually cultivated with the help of cut leaves which provide the nutrition for the mushroom plant.

Leaf-cutting ants may be seen in the underbrush of tropical forests marching, column after column, with their loads almost entirely covering their bodies. Such orderly formations look like a stream of moving foliage, recalling the march of Birnam wood, and oddly enough, this procession is interspersed now and then by totally unrelated insects that only keep company with the ant at this time and display a unique mimicry. The tree hoppers in question have a flat leaf-like body with a jet-black feet simulating to perfection the combined aspect of the ant laborer and his load on the top. This is but one of the sidelights of ant life, which abounds in bizarre instances and associations of unrelated species.
Other species of ants are expert harvesters, collecting, cleaning, and hoarding seeds. Supplies of ant agriculturists are an alluring booty for invaders. War among ants is not an infrequent occurrence, and whenever it is waged, it rages with an utmost ferocity on the
part of the invaders and with equal courage on the part of the defenders. The most amazing angle in the concentrated collective actions of the ant is an extraordinary sense of communication. In some unaccountable way the information of approaching danger and its location spreads with lightning speed and regulates joint action. As illustrated on this page, the marauders loot not only the provisions but take possession of the young ants and raise them in slavery. The warlike red ants, called "Amazons," are known for their frequent fierce raids on the nests of the rather sluggish black ants, who become their slaves and perform all the household duties in the nest, including every personal attention to the masters.

Besides slaves, certain ant colonies also may occasionally harbor castes and outsiders belonging to other insect groups that are tolerated for special advantages derived by the hosts. Some of the guests are not only barely tolerated but persecuted by the hosts and nevertheless manage to stay in hostile surroundings. Altogether about two thousand kinds of insects are known to enjoy a welcome or forced hospitality of ants. For instance, certain caterpillars make their homes in anthills and feed with impunity on the young ones of their landlords. The price of such license is the saccharine juice secured from the external glands of the body of the alien insects and gathered as food and a delicacy by the masters of the nest. Honey dew obtained from glands of insects of various orders and from oak galls may be stored for future use in unique ways. Some of the individuals shown in the honey-ant group have been turned into living containers which correspond functionally to the cell of the beehive. Certain workers are designated to become animated jars for nectar, on which they are gorged, with the assistance of other workers, to the point of a spherical distension. In an almost motionless stare, such living bottles— technically called "repletes"—are suspended from the ceiling of the chamber like so many flasks of Italian chianti in a cellar. In response to the tapping by the antennae of their thirsty and more active comrades, the nectar is released "on call" through regurgitation.

The endurance of ants is truly extraordinary; their industry is indefatigable. Their physical strength is prodigious as compared with human standards. They can easily carry loads many times their own weight and are capable of hoisting or dragging much heavier objects or overpowering insects of far larger size than themselves. The list of professions among ants- including architects, artisans, soldiers, slave-owners, cattle-raisers, harvesters, gardeners, and brewers—would not be complete without mentioning their ingenuity in using a sewing machine and a living one at that. It is known that adult insects never produce silk; only in the larval stage are they endowed with such a capacity. This aptitude of the ant larvae is utilized by the mature ants, who carry their babies along the edges of leaves that must be sewn together. By a timely squeeze and deft manipulation of the animate sewing tool, they produce an efficient piece of work as secure and neat as a fabric produced by the shuttle of a weaver.
Thus we see that the ants have developed their society through successive stages that may be described as hunting, pastoral, and agricultural, and have paralleled human civilization in being the only other living creatures who succeeded in domestication of plants and other animals. They have even become capable of using a species of tools which are considered a prerogative of human inventiveness alone. Altogether the ant
society operates with an almost mechanical perfection, each member of the community being confronted with an individual situation that is solved in accordance with circumstances. This keen instinct, not based on any practice or training—since every ant colony has to start anew—is particularly astonishing and seems to be on the borderland of a higher faculty which we hesitate to call intelligence since we wish to preserve that as an exclusive monopoly of mankind.

Andrey Avinoff's Artistic Credo

Ever since I can remember I have loved drawing and painting. At the age of four years I drew a mountainous landscape, the likes of which I have not since equaled— if the satisfaction and price which I felt at that time are to be accepted as criterions. The quite startling understanding of distance and significance which those receding mountain peaks, each topped by a fine eagle, gave to me was one of the important experiences in my, until then, level existence.

This proved to be but a first happening, in a chain of adventures, which seem to have put me in direct contact with an unexpected variety of artistic sources. Many of the unaccountable incidents and vicissitudes, which came to me in subsequent years, had no apparent connection with art, and yet from them I have been permitted to build a deliberate and not unfounded point of view, which taken together with a conscientious attempt to secure technical freedom, have resulted in my present attitude towards aesthetics and towards art. It is the contact with many cycles and sources which leads me to believe in the desirability of a diversity of style, by which the artist may more fully reflect his own impulse and his understanding of the tendencies characterizing various artistic traditions.

My family moved to Russian Turkestan while I was still a child, in order that we might be near the headquarters of my father, who was at that time the commanding general of a brigade of sharp-shooters. While there we visited the semi-independent native state of Bokhara, the wonderful city of Samarkand with its magnificent architectural monuments, which had been partly demolished by earthquakes, that city of Tamerlane and other famous conquerors of Asia. The glorious mosques, with the resplendent tiles of turquoise blue, of deep celestial ultramarine and brilliant gold yellow, have left an indelible imprint on the memory of my childhood days.

I always consider butterflies as my main instructors in art. Since childhood, I have made paintings of them, endeavoring to reproduce every shade of their color, and every minute detail of pattern. Naturally, my eye has been trained to notice the slightest variations in this respect. The question of ornamental value of the butterfly's wings attracted me as one of the most fascinating problems connected with my favorite branch of entomology.

Together with systematic and biological investigators, I regard as most instructive the study of the laws of color and the pattern variations and interconnections exhibited by the butterfly wings, which after all represent the unique phenomenon in nature of a rigid, flat and ornamented surface, stretched onto veins. This surface is devoid of any marked structural irregularity.

The study of each pattern infinitely varies— though manifestly subject to certain laws of balance, symmetry, ornamental repetitions in the very intricate striation, peculiar occelation and elaborate border designs--and discloses wonderfully illuminating material on decoration as pure crystallization of natural ornament, independent of any epoch or national taste. Perhaps one of the most instructive features of the coloring of butterflies' and moths' wings, is not so much how the colors are matches, as in what proportion of relative areas, equal or interrupted, they are combined. The elements of quality and quantity are here equally significant.

One can find, on these winged jewels examples of dynamic symmetries, "constructivisms", "suprematism", so much spoken about nowadays, and a great deal more besides, never dreamed by any modernist prophet.
I decidedly consider a close and thoroughly systematic study of color rotations and pattern variations of lepidoptera, a most valuable guide for developing a sense of color composition and a feeling for harmonious and natural ornamentation.

Besides the scientific interest and gratification which I derived from entomology, I feel myself immeasurably indebted in my work as an artist, to the winged creatures that received from the ancient Greeks the fitting name of Psyche.

Another circumstance which played an important role in the formation and direction of my aesthetic taste since childhood, was our old country house, in the south of Russia, with all the varied collections and artistic treasures which it contained.

My nearest ancestors were enthusiastic collectors in different branches, and so our old house happened to contain many remarkable paintings of the Italian, Dutch and French masters, great numbers of Asiatic rugs, old porcelain, various antiquities from archeological excavations, and a considerable numismatic collection. Our library comprised a great diversity of fine illustrated books, dating from the 15th century. An important portion of the heirlooms, treasured in Byzantine and Old Russian schools. Some of the most valuable of these religious paintings.

Adorned the church that occupied one of the wings of the house. This estate was plundered and destroyed during the Russian Revolution; the old manor and the church with all their precious contents are now nothing but ruins.

In previous years we used to spend our summers here and during my early days I lived in this atmosphere of beautiful paintings and objects of art. When subsequently, in mature age, I visited the galleries of Europe, I realized that fate had ordained me, since childhood, to live in a real art museum, the various treasures of which had the additional importance of being objects intimately connected with our family traditions. All these dear and beloved paintings, books and collections were not only my teachers but also my friends, departed now, but never forgotten.

Though my vocation has always been art and natural science, I graduated in law, and as was the custom in certain classics in Russia, I joined the government service, passing from district courts to the Senate where I was Assistant Secretary General to the Imperial Court, where I had been appointed in 1911, as Gentleman-In-Waiting to the Emperor, and, at the time of the Revolution, I was elected District Marshall of Nobility.

But my official occupation fortunately always gave me ample leisure for art and travels. My paintings were first admitted to public exhibition in Moscow in 1904, before I had reached the age of twenty, and since them they have been on exhibition in both capitals, Moscow and St. Petersburg, most often with the Society of Moscow Artists and the Academy of Fine Arts. Voyaging about the world brought me in contact again, at a mature age, with the magic and charm of Asiatic art.

It was a true inspiration to admire the glories of India--Buddhist, Hindu and Mohammedan--the phantasmagoric temples of South India, the grace and abstract perfection of Mogul art, fascinating mystery and profound symbolism of Tibetan banners in remote lamaseries. I am inclined equally to treasure the enigmatical, terse laconism of the early Chinese portrait painters, the calligraphic refinement of a court painter of a Shah-Takmasp or a Shah-Jehan, or the devout pictorial prayer of a nameless monk in a forgotten monastery.

The tropical lands in the Old and New Worlds— Ceylon; later, the West Indies, have
disclosed the wonders of color in exuberant vegetation that transcend all regular limits of landscape composition in temperate zones. The primitive art of modern natives presents an interesting tribute of naïve interpretation of the luxury and overwhelming power of surrounding Nature.

Having come in touch with a great variety of artistic traditions, during my travels around the
World, I always experience a delight in plunging into different cycles of conceptions of beauty, and now I feel that my inclinations are decidedly divided between different schools, even different cultures.
Perhaps these tendencies may seem paradoxical, but for me they preserve the intimate interconnection, like different sounds forming one chord. It would be difficult to express, briefly and explicitly, my artistic credo from the point of view of my sympathies with accepted and known schools, but its closest formula would include early Italian and Flemish Renaissance of scarcely later than the Quattro Centro, ancient Russian Icon paintings and Indo-Persian miniatures.

The early Tibetan art also commands, in a way, may very great admiration. The archaic Greek arts conception has a great fascination for me. In the modern schools, which leave me cold in comparison with the magnificent achievement of a more spiritual past, I am interested naively in some novel ways of treating luminosities, spectral problems, transparencies and superimposed prismatic reflections, so frequent on the iridescent butterfly wings.

A loyalty to artistic traditions, a feeling of appropriateness of various forms and style to particular subjects, and a knowledge of draftsmanship are the best assets, in my opinion, to a free personal expression. Moods, prompted by certain pictorial problems, should freely and easily dictate the corresponding form of expression, blending them out of their sympathetic components and molding them into one indivisible entity.

It is like the perfect knowledge of all the shades of meanings of words, the understanding of rules of correct phrase construction and the feeling for character in language, which permits us to use it to the best advantage in expressing our innermost personality.

An artist, in order to be free, should worship craftsmanship and should lovingly cultivate the vehicle of his expression in all the varied forms of his fancy.

With all due respect to the correctness of drawing in cases of realistic painting, I feel more and more of call toward symbolic and allegorical paintings.

The grand visions, contained in many sacred scriptures, are a source of the most inspiring admiration, and if I will be able to dedicate myself to the pictorial interpretation of some of these in the modest limits of my ability, I would consider my vocation fulfilled.

Painting should remain a sign—it is by its very nature: symbol.

It should be, in its true achievement, a relation of significances—an apocalypse in colors and forms.

Mathematical harmonies and musical laws are akin to it. The metaphysical is within its reach.

The styles are part of the form and thus are an intrinsic element of the subject, since to disclose it in a visual, graphical or chromatic form is the purpose of painting.

Our ecstasies, before the multifarious glories of the beautiful, are anchored in an intuitive consciousness of s supreme unity.

The work of an artist should be a sacrifice of Devotion and Tribute of admiration to the creator, as a dewdrop reflects the sun and shines with a small spark of a heavenly rainbow.

Our Neighbors, the Insects
By Andrey Avinoff

"Beneath our feet exists a fascinating world, almost unnoticed
except for an occasional gaudy butterfly or a particularly vicious mosquito"

The world of insects is a realm of myriads of lives fighting for existence among themselves, hunting one another, and even conspiring—from several quarters to challenge the very supremacy of mankind upon this globe. As Maeterlinck once said— ' 'Insects are not only our mysterious foes, our sinister competitors, but also possibly our successors." Perhaps things are not so bad as that, but human society undoubtedly has to be on guard lest its fields, gardens, and forests be invaded by these multitudinous armies of cunning malefactors. One might say with good reasons that if mankind is called upon to be the exponent of intelligence, insects are manifesting the highest degree of instinct, frequently of the most involved and entirely incomprehensible order.
Our struggle with insect pests is largely a war between reason and instinct, between ingenious technique and blind perfection of instinctive operation. Insects today form about three-quarters of the whole population of the Earth, as far as the number of species of known living beings is concerned, including large and small, arctic and tropical, terrestrial and aquatic. They are among the oldest inhabitants of the world. In remote ages, many millions of years ago, when the deposits of the coal of today were still luxuriant growths of forests, several insects existed in forms similar to the present ones— often many times larger than their modern representatives.
The hosts of insects developed into countless varieties in subsequent geological ages when flowering plants emerged and blossoms were in need of an agency for pollination. Insects filled this role with increasing success. The mutual adjustment between the insects and the plants in this respect is among the most remarkable chapters of biology. The orchids, those fantastic looking flowers which sometimes resemble fanciful butterflies swinging on stems, were studied by Darwin, who predicted that some day on the Island of Madagascar would be found a hawkmoth with a tongue sufficiently long to penetrate to the bottom of the slender ten inch tube of a native orchid, to reach the nectar and incidentally be responsible for its proper fertilization. Many years later such an insect was actually discovered.
But the relationship of insects and plants is far from being of a friendly nature all through. The destruction inflicted by injurious insects upon vegetation is beyond any computation—affecting foliage, fruits, and the very trunks of trees. Whole forests are denuded by the voracity of caterpillars; fields are overrun by invasions of grubs. Economic losses caused yearly in crops of cotton by the weevil reach the billion-dollar mark. Agriculture, forestry, and gardening are under constant menace from insect enemies, mostly of a foreign origin. Imported pests find favorable surroundings, since they leave their natural foes on the other side. An amateur in entomology who made some breeding experiments on relatives of the silkworm, and carelessly allowed some specimens of this European undesirable to escape introduced the gypsy moth in Massachusetts. The wave of this obnoxious moth is now steadily advancing over several states, as it does not find a counterbalancing check in native parasites. Among the recent undesirable immigrants are the European cornborer, the army worm, the browntail moth, and the Japanese beetle. The white butterfly so frequently seen over our fields is the cabbage butterfly of Europe—just about as welcome a guest as the English sparrow. Almost a hundred thousand men in the United States are engaged exclusively in a systematic fight against detrimental insects. But this army, equipped with all the technical facilities of modern science, could never hope to win without the natural enemies of these invaders. Biologists discover insect forms preying on these destroyers of cultivated vegetation, transport them into this country, and spread them artificially as the most reliable weapon for combating these dangerous newcomers.

The Praying Mantis, Villain of the Insect World. Drawing by Andrey Avinoff.
We not only suffer great economic losses from deleterious insects, but also have to protect ourselves against forms responsible for the dissemination of disease, as it is well known that specific mosquitoes carry yellow fever and malaria. It was only through the careful study of their life history that Dr. Gorgas was able to make the Panama Canal Zone practically immune from these scourges.
The life stories of insects are probably the strangest biographies among all living creatures. The most characteristic features of insect life are the phases through which each individual passes. A complete transformation follows in four stages. The initial phase of this cycle is the egg wherein the future insect is concealed as a tiny hard-shelled speck. A minute larva, or caterpillar, crawls out of the egg in due course and spends its period of life in this form busily eating most of the time. It grows rapidly in volume and is forced more than once to change its skin, which becomes too tight. Finally, the larva transforms itself into a pupa, or chrysalis, usually a motionless body quite different in structure from the caterpillar, and bearing on its outer crust the indication of the future anatomy of the adult insect. Sometimes the caterpillar spins an elaborate cocoon before pupation, or buries itself underground. Some insects spend quite a long time in this stage--as in the case, for instance, of certain hawk moths--whereas others require only a few days or accomplishing the transformation. When the necessary time has elapsed the skin of the pupa becomes brittle, bursts on the back, and the mature insect emerges to a new life, which has nothing in common with the larval stage of existence. During this last stage propagation is assured, to begin this same cycle all over again from the eggs!
The grubs do not live exclusively on the land. Many insects spend their intermediate stage under the water, undergoing odd adventures before they reach the grown-up state. Some of the quaintest chronicles of insect life are those of the caddis fly which usually lives two seasons in streams as a wormlike being, in a specially constructed portable house of sand particles and minute pebbles, or fashioned out of nicely trimmed grass blades and twigs, or small shells. There are caddis fly larvae, which start their aquatic career in a miniature "log cabin," and later move into a small shelter built of stone. They hunt for food in a most unusual way. The larvae construct a silken net with a mesh of exquisite regularity. This ingenious contraption is formed into a funnel shape. It is invariably installed against the current of the stream in such a way as to insure the capture of various microscopic life forms used as food. When one of these diminutive fishermen feels hungry he crawls outs of his hut and inspects the contents of the net. In order not to lose his way home he follows a thread of silk leading to the base. Anglers familiar with the grub of the caddis fly rarely suspect the wonders of its life. After a laborious period of two seasons underwater, amid toil and hazard, the winged insect is born for a few hours of aerial life. One could not find a more striking example of a dual personality so different in these successive aspects.
The presence of wings on an insect is always a sign that we have before us a mature specimen. Since winged forms greatly predominate among insects in their final stage of transformation, it shows that by far the greater part of everything living on this earth is endowed with the faculty of flight. The latest attainment of man in our industrial age, the mastery over the air, is but a natural gift in the possession of the majority of the terrestrial population aside from mankind.
But the swiftest airplane is still outspeeded by the record holder in flight among insects. The deer bottle is able to propel itself at a rate half as rapid as a rifle bullet. If this fly kept moving in one direction it could encircle the globe in about nine hours. In order to fulfill their purpose the wings are formed of a membranous tissue, which develops to its full size and rigidity very shortly upon emerging from the pupa. In fact, no mature insects grow. The popular notion that small flies are the progeny of large ones is totally wrong.
In butterflies and moths the wings are covered with scales in a shingle-like fashion which is responsible for the brilliancy and variety of their coloration. The metallic colors on the wings of butterflies are caused by the physical phenomenon of refraction; whereas in other cases tints are produced by the presence of pigments. Artists might study profitably the creative suggestions indicated by the patterns on the wings of butterflies and moths, which are different in all the one hundred and fifty thousand known forms. These wings are beautifully embellished pages on which the specialist can read not only the story of the kinship of various species, but decipher as well their relative antiquity and thus discern a clue bearing upon the past of the earth. By studying the distribution of insects on the islands of certain archipelagos we can obtain additional testimony referring to the succession and breaking out of the landmasses, when migration was possible over previous land bridges.
To take at random another mystery of insect life, one may mention the light emitted by the firefly as being by far the most perfect luminescence of its kind. Without the slightest sign of heat waves-- which form a great proportion of the radiation in the artificial light devised by man--this perfectly cold light sparkling gently on our summer nights is but an unattainable ideal for the endeavor of our physicists and technologists.
In the clans of the wasps and their close relatives one can find practitioners of all crafts. Some of them are skilled in constructing homes for their families in the form of near jars of clay. Another guild of winged artisans is most proficient in papermaking. The nests of paper rolled and stretched by the insects, which assemble for this purpose wood pulp from the surface of old logs. The wasps of various species can furnish many examples of homes constructed without hands. They lead us to the most astonishing angle of insect life--the societies of insects.

The bee is probably the best known insect practicing communal life, and together with the silkworm it enjoys the reputation of being the most useful insect to mankind, making direct products of universal popularity. Though human associations with the bee date since time immemorial, in a way it would be correct to state that the more we learn about the bee the less we know. How is the beehive governed in the orderly fashion which it follows; what causes the swarms to leave the hive; how do certain individuals become queens so different from the workers, though developing from similar eggs; and how do bees maintain such standards of regularity in constructing the cells of the comb? Such questions have become increasingly difficult to answer.
The societies of the ant are in many respects still more extraordinary than the ones of the bee, primarily because there are so many kinds of ants exhibiting totally different customs. In this section of insects one can find real harvesters gathering seeds, sorting them, and storing them away; farmers raising herds of special insects which provide their masters with a sweet beverage; mushroom growers cultivating subterranean gardens of these lower plants; even brewers using as barrels specimens of their own kind who remain obediently suspended from the ceiling of their cellars. Among ants one can study castes of born warriors with formidable jaws and pugnacious temperaments. Armies are marshaled in perfect military order with a detachment of scouts to perform preliminary reconnoitering! The strategic plans are apparently evolved somewhere in the recesses of the anthill and the attack carried out in systematic order, moving for the purpose of plundering other ant cities in order to seize the most treasured possessions: stored food, immature inhabitants, and cattle, if this term can be applied to tree lice. The loot and the enslaved prisoners are carefully carried away and concealed in the stronghold from whence the whole campaign was launched.
The ant is probably the only creature, except the human being, which uses tools. At least one can refer in this sense to a species, which lives among foliage and constructs homes out of leaves by pulling them together with threads of silk. As the mature ants cannot produce silk they use the good offices of their own larvae, which are able to spin it. Consequently, the ant resorts to the procedure of taking a baby ant in its jaws and squeezes it slightly. They prove to "worth squeezing," as the leaves can thus be bound together by means of the web supplied by these little, animated sewing machines.
Ants deserve the well-established reputation of utmost industry. Nevertheless there are groups of the same family, which have lapsed into extreme laziness, being spoiled by their slaves, which are kept to perform the labor of the household. The slave-owners would die of starvation if their willing servants did not take them care of. The degeneration of such ant societies through indolence into a parasitic state might supply an instructive example to human communities as an object lesson taught by the wonderland of insects.
And yet, in spite of its vastness, this insect world beneath our feet almost escapes our notice, invisible were it not for an occasional gaudy butterfly, or some showy, lustrous beetle, or a particularly blood-thirsty and determined mosquito.

On the Art of Knowing
By Andrey Avinoff

"We have to devise a way of cultivating first-hand contact with the world of learning without losing sight of the broader art— integrating the general aspects scientific conception!"

Learning becomes steadily more imaginative and dramatic; at no other time has knowledge been so fascinating as now. We may be only at the Alpha of our alphabet, without any Omega in sight.
We hear frequently about the art of living, the art of thinking, the art of loving, the art of learning, the art of education; but it is not so much the acquisition and the transmission of knowledge that I would like to consider, as the gift of keeping knowledge aesthetically balanced, harmoniously attuned to the things in life that matter.
In the first place let us look into the make-up of knowledge as part of our mental, spiritual and emotional equipment. The quest of knowledge, rooted in human nature, has to be assimilated by human nature lest it become an alien tumor on the brain. Learning should be borne easily and lightly, never as a ponderous distinction of impressing importance. Neither should it be looked upon as a mere instrument for practical purposes, devoid of an organic amalgamation with our own selves. Overestimation, underestimation, and misadaptation arise primarily from a lack of sense of proportion. Here enters the question of an esthetic balance in distributing the weight of our learning over our mental and psychic frame, in making out of it a vital, living problem, and in heightening it to the significance of values.
It is customary to stress an attitude of mutual distrust between scientific and artistic circles. Scientists do not conceal their fear that artists might work havoc in the orderly precincts of learning. They frown at the implicit faith artists put in the power and value of intuition. The spark of inspiration is looked upon with suspicion as a dangerous will-o'-the-wisp that promises to shorten a lengthy but reliable road to the goal. Yet no scientific cogitation is deprived of a true element of fancy, of an imaginative ingredient. Logic and knowledge themselves belong to an order of beauty.

On the other hand, art has its own laborious preparation not less exacting than the path of science, and masterpieces require a latent incubation. What we should like to achieve, for the good of all concerned, is a more sober knowledge, on the part of those who profess and practice art, of the surrounding world of forms and structure— and a more sympathetic appreciation of the artistic angle by those who dwell on scientific problems. The values of art lie in making people happier, if a statement of purpose can take the place of elusive definition.
Among the forces responsible for bringing about our knowledge we may distinguish roughly three main agencies: inquisitiveness, exploration, and the stimulus of collecting. Let us take them up in turn.

Inquisitiveness. Question marks should be at the beginning and at the end of every research. Every scientific investigation starts with a question and leads to one. It is only some-where midway that it sounds like an answer. The signs of query hedge the sentence of research in Spanish-fashion. And perhaps, as in the Spanish language, one question will — turn out to be the reverse of the other. It is doubtful whether the persistent interrogation mark of re-search can ever be straightened out ! into the triumphant sign of exclamation. Its hesitating curve endures in spite of all forging and hammering, though we might now and then vociferously express our delight at sundry attainments, and sprinkle our investigatorial phraseology with exclamation points. But the spirit of research must continue under the aegis of the everlasting question sign.
The "what" and the "why" are not confessions of weakness and defeat. They are far more humanly noble than a "that's that," which is not even an exclamation, but a full stop without any promise of further development. So let us not feel worried for not being able to give a conclusive answer at a given moment.
"Articles found and no questions asked" is not an end of an honorable career. It is also not even a happy ending. Scientific investigation should boldly resort to the figure of silence when it cannot do better. This sounds a hopeless truism, but we observe so much at present to the opposite effect when science attempts to settle matters beyond its competence. in Asserting our right for curiosity as a driving power of knowledge, let us not misplace it. To be curious should be a function of the observer, not a predominant character of the object. We should not be constantly on the search of the curious and especially of curios. The paradoxical, the aberrant, and the out-of-the-ordinary, are less attractive to the scientific investigator than a commonplace which reveals the everlasting laws of nature. Explorations. Great explorers invariably arouse our imagination. Humanity is generous and willing in glorifying its heroes of exploration. In the stellar firmament is indicated the cruise of Argo, a constellation in our home galaxy; and the name of Magellan is projected outside of the boundaries of our Milky Way, being assigned to a disrupted spiral nebula which has probably had a more lengthy and eventful existence than our own universe.
Yet successful explorations should not, at all cost, be directed into far-away lands. Scientific argosies are quite fruitful and inspiring in our own immediate vicinity. As far as the scope of results is concerned, an exploration does not necessarily depend on the length of its itinerary. The same applies to the field of research. It would be misleading to favor in research the foreign and remote. Highly concentrated spices from distant lands as a rule lack reliable and constant nutrition. They might possess some appetizing stimulus as mental pabulum but they are doubtful as a preferred and exclusive diet for a researcher. The important thing that counts is the thrill of a successful investigation, the consciousness that we are on the track of something original, refreshing, and significant. We cannot refrain from saying a word of encouragement to the amateur— if he needs it. Whatever is said and done he will proceed with his endeavor because his interest is driven by love, as the derivation of this name from amateur implies. What did the amateur ever accomplish for science? So much that it would be quite safe to say that a professional is only useful and productive when he acts as an amateur at heart, in the best sense of this word. The array of illustrious names of amateurs in every path of scientific endeavor is truly stupendous, covering the whole of the glorious soil of research. Astronomy, mathematics, biology, all are beset with names of men and women who have substantially advanced the progress of these disciplines. In the field of entomology alone the hall of fame has a wide circle of justly celebrated amateurs. All these people derive real joy out of their avocations— and we must not forget that joy and sublimity merge in devotion.

The next incentive of learning is the instinct of collecting. It is ingrained in varying degrees in every human being. A museum is only a civic aggregate of this instinct of hoarding, preserving, and showing. Alongside an orderly accumulation of objects and data we must not overlook the process of repudiation and annihilation. We must learn to collect and to reject. Memory can act properly only hand in hand with the power of oblivion. Plato used to speak of true knowledge as anamnesis, as a resurrection out of the limbo of the forgotten. Accumulated piles of facts are liable to grow cumbersome and unruly. To forget productively in order to know productively we must first properly place the individual fact. We must file it somewhere; then we can remove it from our daily sight, so that the file does not encroach on life. Furthermore a properly organized file should be in close cooperation with a wastepaper basket. This latter is a great institution and should be wisely patronized, for it is the Shiva of destruction functioning jointly with the Vishnu of perpetuation for the benefit of sensible knowledge.
It is only through judicious elimination of the trivial that we can give esthetic proportions to the B| body of our knowledge. The evolutionary development of the physical type of living beings is a good example of a gradual discarding of the outgrown. Art altogether is a species of inspired elimination. The etching is a cobweb of black lines precariously projected over the vacuity of white paper, a graphic gossamer spread over a predominating negation. What would music sound like if there were neither pauses nor intervals, no beneficial moments of silence and recuperation? Modem music grows often over-efficient in filling all interspaces, promulgating a disquieting and deafening "horror of the void." The very mercy promised by religions is forgiveness, thus? forgetting of our embarrassing and unedifying past. Thus the beautiful of art and the good of faith imply, under certain circumstances, creative and sane oblivion.

In search of truth we should banish the redundant. We are entitled to do it, not for the sake of destruction of records, but for the sake of rising above details and facts into the realm of values. To be correct is not actually a discarding but a transmutation of all evidence, data, and isolated facts into significance. We should primarily aim at such a transfiguration. Education should teach us not only how to assemble facts but should also indicate a constructive way of disposing of them. Let us look upon our learning as a pass-key into the sanctuary of values—if we may use such a formal expression as "sanctuary," conveying as it does a sense of aloofness, and of sacerdotal refrigeration. It is to these altars within us, in the chambers of our hearts, that mind can make an occasional pilgrimage of recognition. The meeting will only prove to be mutually invigorating. Values lead us to quality and craftsmanship as the mark of uncompromising excellence. The sense of sacred dissatisfaction will vigilantly safeguard us from the doldrums of stagnation. In our age of mass production and of all-pervading quantity, a worship of craftsmanship in assembling and preserving knowledge is the main road of salvation from recrudescence of crudity and a lapse into a new wilderness—the machine jungle and 11 the rule of our myriad mechanical Frankensteins. In order not to misunderstood it is important to make it plain that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the machine itself, but with our own attitude toward it. We are liable to throw upon the shoulders of mechanical robots the responsibility for our indolence and lack of originality. A bright point in our times is the spirit of modern science.
Learning is becoming steadily more imaginative, interpretive, and dramatic. At no other time has science been so fascinating, so captivating as now. Biology is discovering startling vistas in heredity and variation. Medicine is penetrating deeper into the baffling mysteries of the human body. Wonders of discoveries are fast accumulating in these eventful recent years of accelerated scientific progress.

We may be only at the Alpha of the scientific alphabet, without any Omega in sight, but we have the right to believe with Santayana that, "what we know are scattered syllables of a single eternal oracle," and that, "intelligence is but one centrifugal ray darting from slime to stars."
Sciences are all allies. They are brought closer together at present as we realize deeper and clearer the continuity of the cosmos. If some of the scholars investigating certain fields prefer to remain isolated, imprisoned in an ivory tower of their own choice, they still can unlock their cells at any time. Though science has not circumnavigated the lands of its constantly growing discoveries, the mutual drift of these continents of unexplored knowledge is quite apparent. We can only dimly guess their ultimate volume and their expansion, but we perceive already how closely inter-woven and germane are all the domains of knowledge. A majestic vision of a wide, wide world—wider than anyone could ever dream before—is a polyphonic unity. The music of the spheres is manifestly not a chaotic jazz on a universal scale. Rhythm and meaning permeate the world and belong to the realm of beauty and reason. The tremendous conceptions of modem astronomy, expounding the depths of stellar swarms, have demonstrated the universality of fundamental laws and basic types of celestial objects. The excessively large and the infinitesimally small have to be interpreted in kindred terms. Or to be more explicit, the stars and atoms explain each other in many ways. Mathematics, astrophysics, physics (on the terrestrial station of a||| world-wide laboratory), chemistry, biochemistry, and further on into the higher realm of organic life, all these departments of knowledge follow an uninterrupted sequence.
There is, however, the reverse of the medal. The public grows accustomed to startling discoveries and develops an exaggerated taste for novelty. There is a growing hunger for the sensational. Responding to this demand, alongside of harrowing detective stories newspapers print largely garbled and sufficiently blood-curdling accounts of monsters of the infinitesimal, or the impending destruction of the earth by knowledge we should feel ourselves at home.
In other words, we should all be specialists somewhere and preserve, at the same time, a general perspective. We have to devise a way of cultivating first-hand contact with the world of learning without losing sight of the broader art— integrating the general aspects scientific conception. Even if our vocation would was not supply appropriate occasions, a reconstructive, exhilarating hobby may provide the remedy.
Unfortunately it cannot be ordered by prescription. It is a mental attitude rarely contagious, scarcely ever hereditary, and fortunately almost always incurable. The happiest thing that can happen in life is to discover our hobby in our own vocation. Work we love contains in itself both the most diligent exertion and its own repose, for any one who contemplates embracing a pedagogical career, an unfailing satisfaction will be derived from being instrumental in developing lasting interests and noble hobbies in pupils. To transmit learning to others is, perchance, one of the most enticing of callings.

The torch of knowledge should pass from hand to hand. The brightness of its light depends on the interest in the subject no less than on the personality of the teacher. Here again human equation remains paramount. Summing up, we should endeavor to assign to science some particular place in the totality of our ideology, in the set of our intellectual and moral convictions. This is the very core of the art of knowing. Art becomes an object of definition only in the past when it has assumed form; but what it should be in the making must be left to our own creative spirit. We shall have to discover for ourselves the art in the making of knowledge, mindful that even though science is not all of the truth, it is a lofty road to it.

Animals that were NOT
by Andrey Avinoff

"Out of this world of bizarre compounds emerges the beautiful enigmatic figure of the unicorn."

The Carnegie Museum as a museum of science— and applied arts is, in the first place, a repository of actual and authentic objects pertaining to these fields, yet we come sometimes in touch with a cycle of things which cannot be described otherwise than as belonging to a fictitious world. Such are legendary entities as recorded in decorative art or exemplified in natural objects, which were ascribed by popular beliefs to fabulous beings, like the "horn of the unicorn."
It is in keeping with our service to truth that we should not overlook the realm of legends, at least as far as documents of colorful folklore are concerned. In that sense our population of odd creatures preserved in the collection for study and display is slowly, but constantly, growing.
A few days ago we received as a gift from Mrs. Thomas R. Hartley, together with extensive ethnographic material, an articulate Japanese dragon, cunningly carved out of wood and denoting the precision, persistence, and patience of Oriental craftsmen. This object has been added to the scattered set of harpies, griffins, and the like, which are owned by our institution. Perhaps one might attempt to introduce some species of orderly classification into this world conjured by human imagination.
Some systematizing is feasible chiefly because the fantasy of mankind is infinitely less prolific than the variety of living forms. In fact, it is surprising that in a field where ample opportunity is reserved for an unbridled fancy the results are so conventional. The usual procedure for producing an accepted fictitious creature is to assemble parts of different beings into a composite unit, in accordance with the symbolic significance attached to those original forms that help to build up the legendary conglomerate.

The first group of fabulous beings treated in this brief sketch comprises creatures with a human element introduced in some way or other into their joint make-up. The most ancient example of this order is the sphinx, associated with Egypt since time immemorial. The great monument of Ghizeh near Cairo, harking from uncertain dates of the earlier dynasties, probably the fourth, and computes its age in several millenniums before our era. As everyone knows, the sphinx bears a human head on a lion's body, thus combining the attributes of wisdom and power. These monuments, hewn out of stone, not infrequently displayed the likeness of the reigning Pharaoh, and were usually the guardians of temples and sacred avenues.
In a somewhat different form the sphinx spread over Asia Minor and Mesopotamia. Among the ancient Hittites, about 1000 B.C., we find the sphinx in an amplified version—to the body of the lion with the head of a man were added the wings of an eagle and the horns of a bull. To complete this manifold union the tail was sometimes made to look like a serpent. The Assyrian sphinx, called sometimes cherub, shows the same four fundamental forms—the bearded and horned human countenance represents the king, the body is that of a bull or lion, and the wings are those of a mighty eagle. Once in a while some Assyrian composite figures showed another arrangement of the same motives.
Certain monuments in the earlier part of the first millennium B.C. recorded a human figure with a horned head of a lion and feet bearing the talons of an eagle, not unlike the Egyptian conception of their deities, which were portrayed as human beings with the head of an ibis, hawk, jackal, bull, lioness, baboon, or frog. The fourfold creature of Assyria and Babylon corresponds to the creatures described in Ezekiel, with the sole distinction that "the four beasts" of the Assyrian imagery are separated into the original elements according to the Old Testament.
Instances of such an order betray a traditional connection of the Biblical imagery with the symbolism of Babylon. The Scriptures depict the tetra-morph as four individual winged figures: man as the angel; the lion, the roaring sovereign of beasts; the ox, preeminently the animal of sacrifice; and the eagle, the soaring king of the air. "The four beasts" appear again in the Apocalypse at the foot of the divine throne, and are also accepted as the emblems of the four evangelists— the winged lion of St. Mark being the most widely known, whereas the eagle stands for St. John, the ox is associated with St. Luke, and the winged human figure of an angel with St. Matthew.
Such symbolic attributes have a special connotation reflecting certain characteristics of each of the four Gospels and alluding besides to the four elements of ancient teachings. The sphinx of Greece stands midway between those of Egypt and Assyria, since it joins three figures in one. It is a combination of a lion and an eagle with a human head, the latter being invariably that of a woman. Herodotus had already pointed out the difference between the Grecian and the Egyptian conceptions of the sphinx.

Numerous winged sphinxes with feminine heads are found on ancient vases. These are often represented in the round as recovered in excavations on the Grecian territory and in numerous Greek colonies on the coast of the Black Sea. In the mythology of ancient Greece the sphinx of Thebes was especially famous. It was said to have been propounding a riddle that no one could answer and that was finally solved by Oedipus who guessed correctly as to what possessed four, three, and two feet.
In a summary survey of different mythological conceptions we find numerous imaginary creatures involving a human element in some form or other. Greece had its centaurs— half men, half horses; tritons—half men, half fish; sirens and harpies—birds with feminine heads; gorgons with heads adorned with snakes instead of locks. In India we encounter a wide ramification of the serpent cult, depicting cobras with human heads, these beings called "Nag-hini" in the Hinduistic Pantheon. Gannesh, the benign and jolly Indian god, is featured with an elephant's head on a human body, which by a congenial touch of elephantiasis is permeating till its ponderous proportions.
Another cycle of fabulous creatures omits the human ingredient altogether. Such are the chimeras of classical Greece with the features of a goat, a lion, and a snake. Cerberus was an infernal mastiff with a triple head. Pegasus, the most celebrated of all the hippo-griffins, was a winged horse. A special kind of fantastic entity bearing the name of griffin—half lion, half eagle—was believed to be watching over subterranean treasures of gold.
In the Scythian art of South Russia of the period of the Greek colonies, and of Siberia some two thousand years ago, the griffin was frequently used as a symbol of superhuman faculties. Scythian objects from Central Asia and the northern coast of the Black Sea, as well as a few rare pieces of prehistoric textiles recovered in recent years in Siberia, show the same customary aspect of the griffin. Even the ears of a lion adorning the eagle's head are carried out with a persistent tenacity to tradition in articles scattered over a wide area of the European and Asiatic continents.
Christian iconography has also figured the griffin in the same conventional style. Without any deviation from the pagan prototype it is sculptured on the Cathedral of St. Mark and on numerous structures of the Romanesque period. Alexander the Great driven to heaven by two surging griffins was a conventional theme for the decoration of Christian churches in Central Asia during the early Middle Ages, following toward a Chin legend recorded by Pseudo-Callisthenes.
The griffin contributed in a certain measure to the evolution of the Chinese and the Indo-Chinese dragon through the medium of Scythian art from the original Iranic boundaries of the source. The Chinese dynasties of Shu and Han, preceding and following the character of style present at the beginning of our era, denote a distinct imprint of Scythian influences in various stages of divergent branches of ornamentation. In the matter of the Chinese dragon, the snake element predominates, although the quadruped is still noticeable and the wings have been obliterated.
While the pedigree of the dragon has to be traced through the line of the griffin, one should mention that on some of the polychrome decorations in ancient Babylon are shown sufficiently well-defined dragon-like monsters with the front paws of a lion, the hind legs with the talons of an eagle, and the body, head, and tail of a snake. It is worth observing that in India, China, and Japan mythological creatures in the form of a snake are especially popular, whereas the cycle of partly human composite beings is customarily associated with the classical Mediterranean culture. The wide geographic area between Mesopotamia through Persia, Central Asia, Siberia, and Mongolia, toward China, was the domain of the griffin, bridging together the Mediterranean kingdom of the sphinx and the Indo-Chinese empire of the serpent.

It goes without saying that the boundaries of these territories were not fixed with clear-cut precision, and the character of styles and tradition prevailing within certain limits were not exclusive of divergent motives. It was rather a matter of predominance of varied symbols which nevertheless pointed toward the land between Asia Minor and the Persian Gulf, the old world of Assyria, Babylon, and Chaldea, as the hypothetical ancestral cradle of many of the fictitious creatures worshipped and pictured by early mankind.
It may be a far-fetched conjecture to suggest that the plumed serpent of the Mayas is a faint reminiscence of the Chinese dragon carried to Central America in pre-Columbian ages, like the Oriental jade that apparently found a way of reaching Mexico and Costa Rica. One scarcely needs to revive the myth of the submerged Atlantis as some immoderate enthusiasts of this theory are prone to do upon every provocation, ready even to detect a distant echo of the north African Atlas in the very name of the foremost Mayan deity, the Quetzal-coatl.
As we turn to the West we see that the dragon-like image has been treated there in a variety of ways discernible in heraldry as basilisks, cockatrices, and wyverns— all "abominable to behold," according to the old bestiaries. A special research on this subject is embodied in the work of John Vinycomb entitled "Fictitious Creatures in Art,'' but referring principally to British heraldry. Several painters of the Renaissance period depicting St. George and St. Michael had occasion to indulge in an interpretation of the dragon. Hieronymus Bosch, Breughel, and Callot have gone on record as the most convincing portraitists of incongruous monsters fit to stock the worst nightmare with every diversity of the gruesome and grotesque.
The temptation of St. Anthony turns under their brush and etching needle into an assemblage of unimaginable, outlandish conundrums with parts of inanimate objects and mechanical accessories introduced into these strange portmanteau-beings of two, three, and many-in-one. Out of this world of bizarre compounds emerges the beautiful enigmatic figure of the unicorn. As early as in some Egyptian papyri the unicorn was associated from time to time with the lion, and ever since then they have been engaged in a joint career leading them to "fight for a crown" or to serve as "twin supporters of many coats of arms.
According to a widespread legend the indomitable unicorn was amenable to docility only by a virgin. The unicorn has been magnificently glorified on many medieval tapestries of transcending beauty. A scholarly monograph creating at length the lore of the unicorn bears the epigram "Now I believe in unicorns."

The only real article identified with the famous beast, however, is the solitary twisted tooth "of a certain whale. The narwhal of the northern waters is responsible for the supply of such huge tusks, accredited by superstition to possess the miraculous virtue of testing poisons and assuring immunity from any deadly concoction. Drinking cups out of ivory ascribed to unicorns were accordingly valued more highly than their weight in gold. A single tusk would fetch more than ten thousand dollars in modern (1942) currency.
Our Museum, by the way, has a few pieces of narwhal tusks which would help to solve many of our current financial problems if this ivory could be disposed of at the price prevalent in the sixteenth century and registered in royal inventories of the period. Although this short sketch scarcely aspires to contain even a bare enumeration of all the fanciful beasts, it would be appropriate to embody in this assemblage of incredible animals the famed phoenix of classical antiquity and Oriental tradition. It was believed to be a resplendent bird which would be reborn every five hundred years after filling its wings with aromatic gums on Lebanon and burning itself to death on the Altar of Heliopolis. Then it would resurrect triumphantly to a new life and rise out or the ashes in order to resume the same miraculous cycle.
Conventional figments of human imagination are not dropped into oblivion by our own city of Pittsburgh, where sphinxes and griffins face each other in the vicinity of our institution— from the steps of the Syria Mosque and the roof of the Soldiers Memorial. An attentive observer will also discover in the halls of the Carnegie Institute many mythical creatures or all periods, and will be able to see a few original pieces of art and archeology with figures of that order among the collections of the Museum. So it may with right be said that we do not decline, under certain circumstances, to harbor animals that were not, although we endeavor to stay as matter-of-fact as any museum would be reasonably expected to be, rather favoring those that either were or are.

Address of Welcome
from the acting Director of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh 1925-1945
Andrey Avinoff

"What was always intuitively felt by every sensitive mind as a realm, impalpable but true,
beyond the veil of immediate actuality, is now expressed by the language of science
arriving at similar conclusions by another path."

The many branches of science are more closely inter-connected at present than at any time since the cradle of scientific thought. This striving for comprehending the cosmos, for mastering the forces of nature, has been an age-long endeavor of mankind. In the light of modern achievements it is easy to belittle and even to ridicule the inconsistencies, insufficiencies and naïvetes of early Greek thinkers.
It is a method of an intelligent approach to the understanding of the world.
To know what to do, and to do what one knows to be best, are two aspects of one awareness. The creative spirit in scientific activity leads to sane practical idealism. It would be a truism to assert how extensive is the influence of science on general progress and happiness. Some rash social reformers imagine there exists a miraculous shortcut to a millennium. They are to propound the theory of an immediate redistribution of economic values… for something more than a fictitious improvement of exterior welfare, new values have to be laboriously created and science is a potent factor in this direction.
Science through ceaseless, painstaking research, is helpful in creating leisure, as its precious crowning prize, the use of which should be governed by the pursuit of aesthetic, spiritual and emotional values, as well as intellectual ones, and should assist in building a sane mind in a sane body.

Materialism received a severe blow from the hands of precise science, the very quarters of which were considered the citadel of an eternal and indestructible substance. On the other hand, the theory of relativity, in its epistemological conclusions, aims at a vulnerable point of positivism, erecting a system of legitimate metaphysics sui generis in the sense of a meta-geometrical universe.
According to Einstein, time and space are not any more independent entities, neither does a world acquire a reality with a uniform time and space. This four-dimensional continuity should be complicated by local distortions, and these warped portions of superspace are known in ordinary parlance as matter.

What we know as our world is but a section through a four-dimensional universe. The complete visualization of the true world is thus beyond the means accessible to the human mind which cannot envisage duration as an extension comparable to with the three perpendiculars of geometrical space. Paradoxical as it may be, the ultimate conclusions of precise sciences combining mathematics, physics and dynamics, lead to a construction of a reality transcending our ability of immediate understanding. Never in the history of science did such a situation occur, through this profound reversal of ordinary notions is scarcely perceptible in the usual conditions of experiments and observations on account of the slow rate of motions with which human experience is associated. One might compare this state of affairs with accepting a small section of an enormous circle as a straight line from which a short segment will scarcely deviate for all practical purposes as long as we do not continue the curved line too far.

The basic revolution of thought created by the relativistic conception has to be somehow accounted for, by a future revised epistemology, by a readjustment of new problems of knowledge to whatever philosophical system we might accept to our satisfaction.

It is not a hopeless impasse, however. We are not headed into a blind alley.

On the contrary, there is an important message contained in the fact that scientific speculation has attained in a way a sympathetic accord with the insight of an artistic vision, with the inspiration of a poet, and the contemplation of a seer.

What was always intuitively felt by every sensitive mind as a realm, impalpable but true, beyond the veil of immediate actuality, is now expressed by the language of science arriving at similar conclusions by another path. A philosopher has to take into consideration the facts of science, and the scientist can scarcely progress in his attainments without the aid of a certain metaphysical element.

Science coming of age does not frown so much at what seemed to be mere vagaries and figments of groundless imagination. The postulate of aesthetic harmonies, the intuition of faith, have now more chance to be reconciled with a broadening science.

When the fragile jewel-like symmetry of a snowflake catches the fancy of an admiring eye, the scientist knows that he is also confronted by a phenomenon that lies on the borderland of his comprehension, on the threshold of a domain which he can approach but with the strange gauge of the super-dimensional.