“Meaning,” said Julian, “that scientists don’t go for that sort of thing?”
Brad answered that no true scientist could, or if he did, it proved he wasn’t a true scientist. As neat as that!
“But my dear boy—” (Julian always called people “dear,” which sounded more affected than affectionate till you got used to it, and then you realized it was neither, but just a habit)—“my dear boy, if you ignore all worldly success, how do you suppose you’re going to get a chance to prove anything? You can’t sit in a corner all on your own and just be a scientist—it’s not like writing an epic poem or contemplating your navel—you need money for food, equipment that you couldn’t afford, a room to work in that your house doesn’t have, and a job to make it worth somebody’s while to pay you a regular salary!”
“Well, a job’s all right. There’s nothing worldly in that.”
“But unless it’s a good job you’ll wear yourself out marking papers and teaching teen-agers to blow glass! I know, because I remember my own schooldays.”
“There are good jobs.”
“And how do you suppose they are got? College heads aren’t supermen, they don’t know much about science themselves, and because they can only judge a reputation by the look of it, they’re human enough to favor a man who knows how to draw attention to himself. So if he’s smart, that’s exactly what he does. Politics is one way—though dangerous. Social success is safer. And doing stuff on the side that attracts publicity—you Americans know the kind of thing—pseudoscientific articles in your Sunday supplements that aren’t too phony, just phony enough.” (Julian liked to use American slang, which he said was enriching the English language at a period when otherwise a natural impoverishment would have set in. We had another big argument about that once.)
“So you don’t think real distinction counts, Mr. Spee?”
“I didn’t say that. Of course it counts—but it counts a good deal more if you add salesmanship and what your Hollywood people call glamour.”
“Glamour?”
“Certainly…. An interesting new theory, developed by Professor So-and-So in Vienna…it’s like your sparkling new comedy, straight from its phenomenal success on Broadway…even if it only ran three nights…. Vienna is the Broadway of the scientific show business…. I’d strongly recommend a year or two there for you.”
Brad had the same trouble that I had in deciding whether Julian was serious or not, and I could see him wondering about it now.
My father said quietly: “Might not be a bad idea at that.”
Brad was still puzzling over Julian’s epigram. “Show business, eh?” he echoed, in a rather shocked tone. “I hope it isn’t quite so bad.”
“It’s not bad at all, my dear boy, it’s human. We live in an age of headlines, not of hermits.”
“Someday,” said my mother, in her random way, “the hermits may make the headlines.”
“Vienna’s a good place,” said my father. “A very good place indeed.”
It seemed to me that everyone was talking at cross-purposes. “I can’t believe that the true scientist cares much about headlines,” Brad said.
“No?” Julian gave his rather high-pitched feminine laugh. “I could mention the names of at least a dozen who care about them passionately. And they’re big men, not charlatans, don’t make any mistake. They’ll give you some competition if you go after the plums.”
“But I don’t want the plums. I’m not a bit ambitious for things like that—I wouldn’t enjoy the kind of thing some people call success. All I ask is the chance to work usefully at something that seems to me worth while.” He added, as if he had listened to his own words: “And if that sounds priggish I can’t help it—it’s the only way I can express what I mean.”
“Oh, no—not priggish at all,” Julian assured him. “Just an honest mistake you’re making about yourself. Do you mean to tell me you really wouldn’t like to head a research department of your own somewhere, to have no more drudgery, to get yourself recognized as an equal by those whose names in the scientific world you know and respect?… Of course you would…. And as for scientists being worth-whilers and world-savers, let me prick that bubble for you too. I’ve known a good many of them, and in my experience, though some may fool themselves about it, they have one simple and overriding motive above all others… Curiosity.”
“Brad’s motive isn’t that,” my mother interrupted.
“Then by Christ, if you’ll pardon the expression, it had better be, unless he’s a mere moralist hiding behind a rampart of test tubes!” He turned to Brad with his easy confident smile. “Perhaps you are—perhaps you’d really be more at home in a pulpit than a laboratory.”
“No, no, Julian,” my mother interrupted again. “That’s absurd—he’s not a moralist, and why should he hide anywhere? He’s a real scientist—he even defends vivisection!”
It was part of my mother’s charm that her mind flew off at tangents usually capable of changing a subject. This time, however, both Brad and Julian ignored her and the argument went on. “Of course, my dear boy, I’m neither defending nor attacking—I’m just diagnosing what I’ve always felt to be the real germ of the scientific spirit. You probably know much more about it yourself, but my own opinion is, it’s Pandora’s box that lures, not the Holy Grail. And I haven’t yet met a scientist who wouldn’t take a chance of busting up the whole works rather than not find out something. Maybe civilizations have been destroyed like that before. History covers too small a fragment of life on earth for anyone to say it’s unthinkable. After all, we know the Greeks excelled us in several of the arts and perhaps in one of the sciences, that of human government—why not some earlier civilization in engineering or medicine? Anyhow, it’s a beguiling thought—that all the great discoveries have been made and remade over and over again throughout the ages. What do you say, Jane? You’re the historian.”
I said it all sounded very pessimistic and somewhat Spenglerian.
“Personally I find it more agreeable than what the last century called progress.”
“It’s worse than pessimism,” Brad said. “It’s a sort of nihilism.”
“Coo…listen to ’im! Sech lengwidge!” Julian mimicked banteringly.
My father, who had taken little part in the argument and had seemed to be listening in a detached way, now intervened almost irritably. “Nihilism…nihilism…just a word. At various times in my life I’ve been called an economic royalist, a communist, a fascist, and a merchant of death…so don’t let nihilist floor you, Julian.”
“I won’t,” Julian retorted, though he looked as if my father’s sudden support had rather startled him.
Brad was hanging on to the argument.