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(Cock crows)

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(Cattle lowing)

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(MUSIC) Le Tombeau de M de Chambo

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00:01:16,680 --> 00:01:17,629
Light.

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00:01:18,709 --> 00:01:20,659
The light of early morning.

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The light of Holland.

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It spreads over the flat fields,

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it's reflected in the canals

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and it picks out distant towers and spires.

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This was the inspiration
of the first great school of landscape,

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one might almost say, skyscape painting.

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00:02:01,000 --> 00:02:04,349
This is a painting
done in the middle of the 17th century

13
00:02:04,430 --> 00:02:06,379
of the square in Haarlem.

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You can see it's an old painting
because of the clothes the people are wearing.

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But l can walk into this picture,

16
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or rather, into the square.

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Looks very much the same, doesn't it?

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Before the 17th century,

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the idea that one could walk into a picture
this way would have been almost unthinkable.

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It seems quite natural to us,

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and, no doubt, seemed natural
when it was painted.

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But like so many things we take for granted,

23
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it goes back
to a revolutionary change in thought.

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The revolution in which divine authority
is replaced by experience,

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experiment and observation.

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I'm in Haarlem not only because Dutch painting
is a visible expression of this change of mind,

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but because Holland
economically and intellectually,

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was the first country to profit from the change.

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When one begins to ask the question,
"Does it work?" or even "Does it pay?"

30
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instead of asking, "ls it God's will?"

31
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one gets a new set of answers.

32
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One of the first of them is this:

33
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that to try and suppress opinions
which one doesn't share

34
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is much less profitable than to tolerate them.

35
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This conclusion should have been reached
during the Reformation.

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It permeated the writings of Erasmus
who, of course, was a Dutchman.

37
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Alas, a belief in divine authority
of our own opinions

38
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afflicted the Protestants
just as much as the Catholics.

39
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Even in Holland, they continued
to burn and torture each other

40
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right up to the middle of the 17th century.

41
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And the Jews

42
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who, in Amsterdam, were at last exempt
from persecution by the Christians,

43
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the Jews began to persecute each other, too.

44
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Still, when all this is said

45
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the spirit of Holland in the early 17th century
was remarkably tolerant.

46
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One proof is that nearly all the great books
that revolutionised thought

47
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were first printed in Holland.

48
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What sort of a society was it

49
00:04:07,520 --> 00:04:11,270
that allowed these intellectual time bombs
to be set off in its midst?

50
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Inside this charming old almshouse at Haarlem,

51
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which is now a picture gallery,

52
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there's plenty of evidence.

53
00:04:18,240 --> 00:04:20,189
(MUSIC) MARAIS: Suite de Pieces de Violes

54
00:04:38,389 --> 00:04:41,420
We know more about
what the 17th-century Dutch looked like

55
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than we do about any other society,

56
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except perhaps the 1st-century Romans.

57
00:04:46,040 --> 00:04:50,350
Each individual wanted posterity
to see exactly what he was like,

58
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even if he was a member of a corporate group.

59
00:04:57,160 --> 00:05:00,069
And the man who tells us all this most vividly,

60
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the man who painted these pictures,

61
00:05:02,189 --> 00:05:04,379
was the Haarlem painter Frans Hals.

62
00:05:05,269 --> 00:05:07,620
He is the supreme extrovert.

63
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l used to find his works - all except the last -
revoltingly cheerful and odiously skillful.

64
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Now, l love their unthinking conviviality,

65
00:05:17,600 --> 00:05:20,269
and l value skill more highly than l did.

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But l will admit that his sitters don't look like
representatives of a new philosophy.

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But out of these all too numerous group portraits
of early 17th-century Holland,

68
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something does emerge
which has a bearing on civilisation.

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These are individuals

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who are prepared to join in a corporate effort
for the public good.

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00:05:53,040 --> 00:05:58,230
One can't imagine groups like this
being painted in 17th-century Italy,

72
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even in Venice.

73
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They're the first visual evidence

74
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of bourgeois democracy.

75
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Dreadful words.

76
00:06:08,509 --> 00:06:11,579
So debased by propaganda
that l hesitate to use them.

77
00:06:11,680 --> 00:06:15,670
And yet, in the context of civilisation,
they really have a meaning.

78
00:06:15,750 --> 00:06:18,980
They mean that a group of individuals
can come together

79
00:06:19,069 --> 00:06:21,449
and take corporate responsibility,

80
00:06:21,560 --> 00:06:24,910
that they can afford to do so
because they have some leisure,

81
00:06:25,000 --> 00:06:28,540
and that they have some leisure
because they have money in the bank.

82
00:06:33,069 --> 00:06:36,220
This is the society
which you see in the portrait groups.

83
00:06:36,310 --> 00:06:40,338
They might be meetings of local government
committees or hospital governors today.

84
00:06:41,120 --> 00:06:44,660
They represent the practical, social application

85
00:06:44,750 --> 00:06:48,449
of the philosophy
that things must be made to work.

86
00:06:59,040 --> 00:07:00,588
(MUSIC) Baroque harpsichord

87
00:07:13,120 --> 00:07:16,819
Amsterdam was the first centre
of bourgeois capitalism.

88
00:07:16,920 --> 00:07:19,149
It had become, since the decline of Antwerp,

89
00:07:19,240 --> 00:07:23,430
the great international port of the North
and the chief banking centre of Europe.

90
00:07:23,509 --> 00:07:28,420
Drifting through its leafy canals,
lined with admirable houses

91
00:07:28,509 --> 00:07:31,819
one may speculate on the economic system
that produced

92
00:07:31,920 --> 00:07:36,189
this dignified, comfortable,
harmonious architecture.

93
00:08:31,870 --> 00:08:34,500
l don't say much about economics
in this programme,

94
00:08:34,600 --> 00:08:36,548
chiefly because l don't understand them,

95
00:08:36,629 --> 00:08:37,980
and perhaps, for that reason,

96
00:08:38,080 --> 00:08:41,990
believe their importance has been overrated
by post-Marxist historians.

97
00:08:42,080 --> 00:08:43,950
But, of course, there's no doubt

98
00:08:44,028 --> 00:08:46,590
that, at a certain stage in social development,

99
00:08:46,668 --> 00:08:49,740
fluid capital is one of the chief causes
of civilisation.

100
00:08:49,840 --> 00:08:53,308
Because it ensures three essential ingredients:

101
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leisure, movement and independence.

102
00:08:56,480 --> 00:09:01,190
It also allows that slight superfluity of wealth

103
00:09:01,269 --> 00:09:03,940
that can be spent on nobler proportions,

104
00:09:04,028 --> 00:09:08,418
a better doorframe
or even a more extraordinary tulip.

105
00:09:11,240 --> 00:09:14,860
Please allow me two minutes' digression
on the subject of tulips.

106
00:09:14,960 --> 00:09:17,110
Because it really is rather touching

107
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that the first classic example of boom and slump
in capitalist economy,

108
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should have been not sugar, nor railways nor oil,
but tulips.

109
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It shows how the 17th-century Dutch combined
their two chief enthusiasms -

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scientific investigation and visual delight.

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00:09:36,720 --> 00:09:39,788
The first tulip had been imported from Turkey
in the 16th century.

112
00:09:39,870 --> 00:09:42,139
But it was a professor of botany at Leiden,

113
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the first botanic garden of the North,

114
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who discovered its attribute
of unpredictable variation,

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which made it such an exciting gamble.

116
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By 1634,

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the Dutch were so bitten by the new craze,

118
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that for a single bulb of one tulip, the Viceroy,

119
00:10:02,080 --> 00:10:05,590
one collector exchanged 1000lb of cheese,

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00:10:05,668 --> 00:10:09,820
four oxen, eight pigs, 12 sheep,
a bed and a suit of clothes.

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00:10:10,870 --> 00:10:14,019
When the bottom fell out of the tulip market
in 1637

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the Dutch economy was shaken.

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(MUSIC) Baroque harpsichord

124
00:10:27,870 --> 00:10:31,490
However, it survived for over 30 years

125
00:10:31,600 --> 00:10:35,830
and produced superfluities
of the most seductive kind.

126
00:10:38,269 --> 00:10:41,500
What about this little clavichord?
Isn't it enchanting?

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(Faint twang)

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Better to look at than to listen to, I'm afraid.

129
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And large, spacious rooms.

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Black-and-white marble pavements.

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Carved furniture.

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An agreeable way of life.

133
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Along the walls is gold-stamped leather,

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the most sumptuous wall covering l know.

135
00:11:08,240 --> 00:11:13,908
Unfortunately, this kind of visual self-indulgence
very soon leads to ostentation.

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And this, in bourgeois democracy,

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means vulgarity.

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One can see this happening in Holland

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in the work of a single painter,

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Pieter de Hooch.

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In 1660, he was painting these beautiful pictures
of clean, simple interiors.

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Ten years later, they were very elaborate,

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hung with gold Spanish leather.

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The people are richer

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and the pictures are less beautiful.

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Bourgeois capitalism led to a defensive
smugness and sentimentality.

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No wonder that early Victorian painters
imitated pictures of this kind.

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"Every picture tells a story."

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It was a Dutch invention.

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This one is called A Visit To The Nursery.

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00:12:00,080 --> 00:12:02,950
In addition to trivial anecdotes

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the philosophy of observation involved
a demand for realism

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in the most literal sense.

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In the early 19th century, Paul Potter's Bull was
one of the most famous pictures in Holland.

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It was one of the first pictures
that Napoleon wanted to steal for the Louvre.

156
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It's fallen out of favour now.

157
00:12:25,600 --> 00:12:28,668
But l must say, l do find it absolutely fascinating.

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There are many ways of achieving reality.

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This simple-hearted, laborious way
that Potter has followed

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does seem to me to achieve something
which couldn't be done in any other way.

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Isn't that fleecy neck of the sheep extraordinary?

162
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And look at those wild flowers.

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Above all, look at the cow's eye.

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The intensity with which
Potter has looked at its forehead

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at its strong hair

166
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and wet nose

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is obsessive

168
00:13:11,548 --> 00:13:13,820
what we've come to call Surrealist.

169
00:13:16,629 --> 00:13:19,740
Of course, it's a young man's picture.

170
00:13:19,840 --> 00:13:22,950
It has the intensity of the early Pre-Raphaelites,

171
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and indeed
there is something almost nightmarish

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in the way that the young bull dominates the
beautifully-painted landscape in the distance.

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However, one must admit
that bourgeois sentiment and realism

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can produce the most deplorable kind of art.

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And the determinist historian reviewing
the social conditions of 17th-century Holland

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would say that this was the kind of painting
the Dutch were bound to get.

177
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But they also got Rembrandt.

178
00:14:00,240 --> 00:14:03,149
Rembrandt was the great poet
of that need for truth

179
00:14:03,240 --> 00:14:07,428
and that appeal to experience
which had begun with the Reformation,

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00:14:07,509 --> 00:14:09,940
had produced the first translations of the Bible,

181
00:14:10,028 --> 00:14:14,379
but had had to wait almost a century
for visible expression.

182
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At first, truth meant realism.

183
00:14:17,360 --> 00:14:20,470
Behind me is his earliest self-portrait.

184
00:14:20,548 --> 00:14:23,860
Yes, that is the same man
that you saw just now.

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00:14:25,788 --> 00:14:28,538
In this vein, he painted the picture

186
00:14:28,629 --> 00:14:32,940
which is his most obvious link
with the intellectual life of Holland

187
00:14:33,028 --> 00:14:35,379
and his first great success in Amsterdam,

188
00:14:35,480 --> 00:14:37,149
The Anatomy Lesson.

189
00:14:37,240 --> 00:14:43,340
It represents a demonstration given by the
Leading Professor of Anatomy, named Tulp.

190
00:14:43,440 --> 00:14:47,428
The men surrounding him are not of course
students or even doctors

191
00:14:47,509 --> 00:14:51,580
but members of the Surgeons' Guild -
a sort of Board of Trustees.

192
00:14:55,629 --> 00:14:59,940
Vesalius, the first great modern anatomist,
had been a Dutchman.

193
00:15:00,028 --> 00:15:04,019
And Tulp liked to be called Vesalius Reborn.

194
00:15:04,120 --> 00:15:08,590
l fancy he was a quack. He recommended
his patients drink 50 cups of tea a day.

195
00:15:08,668 --> 00:15:10,460
However, he was very successful.

196
00:15:10,548 --> 00:15:12,460
His son became an English baronet.

197
00:15:13,480 --> 00:15:17,750
But it wasn't in such external
and quasi-official ways

198
00:15:17,840 --> 00:15:21,710
that Rembrandt associated himself
with the intellectual life of his time

199
00:15:21,788 --> 00:15:24,700
but by his illustrations to the Bible.

200
00:15:24,788 --> 00:15:28,058
An example is this picture of Bathsheba

201
00:15:28,149 --> 00:15:30,500
pondering the contents of David's letter.

202
00:15:30,600 --> 00:15:34,590
We may think that we admire it as pure painting,

203
00:15:34,668 --> 00:15:38,259
and, in fact, it is a masterly piece of design.

204
00:15:39,509 --> 00:15:42,070
But, in the end, we return to the head

205
00:15:42,149 --> 00:15:48,139
where Bathsheba's thoughts and feelings are
rendered with an insight and a human sympathy

206
00:15:48,240 --> 00:15:51,990
which a great novelist could scarcely achieve
in many pages.

207
00:15:53,389 --> 00:15:56,860
From the first
Rembrandt wanted to record' his experience

208
00:15:56,960 --> 00:15:59,590
of how human beings reveal their emotions.

209
00:15:59,668 --> 00:16:04,500
And as his art grew deeper, he succeeded
in doing so with ever greater subtlety.

210
00:16:04,600 --> 00:16:08,190
To my mind, one of the most moving examples

211
00:16:08,269 --> 00:16:10,500
is the picture known as The Jewish Bride.

212
00:16:10,600 --> 00:16:12,668
Nobody knows what its real title should be.

213
00:16:12,750 --> 00:16:15,658
But the subject
that Rembrandt had in mind is evident.

214
00:16:15,750 --> 00:16:18,379
It is a picture of grown-up love.

215
00:16:18,480 --> 00:16:23,710
A marvellous amalgam
of richness, tenderness and trust.

216
00:16:24,480 --> 00:16:27,548
The richness expressed
in the painting of the sleeves,

217
00:16:27,629 --> 00:16:30,220
the tenderness in the placing of the hands,

218
00:16:31,908 --> 00:16:34,700
the trust in the expression of the heads.

219
00:16:37,668 --> 00:16:40,500
Marvellous as Rembrandt's paintings are,

220
00:16:40,600 --> 00:16:43,830
l find more of his thoughts on human life,

221
00:16:43,908 --> 00:16:46,259
certainly his deepest
and most intimate thoughts,

222
00:16:46,360 --> 00:16:48,269
in his drawings and etchings.

223
00:16:48,360 --> 00:16:52,950
His etchings are the fullest communication
any artist has made

224
00:16:53,028 --> 00:16:54,620
since Dürer's engravings.

225
00:16:54,720 --> 00:16:56,629
And as with Dürer

226
00:16:56,720 --> 00:17:00,950
Rembrandt has put as much into them
as into any of his paintings.

227
00:17:01,028 --> 00:17:05,778
This is one of the most famous
and elaborate of them

228
00:17:05,880 --> 00:17:07,868
Christ Healing The Sick.

229
00:17:07,960 --> 00:17:12,390
And what a marvellous
and completely original conception it is.

230
00:17:12,480 --> 00:17:14,828
Suffering humanity,

231
00:17:14,920 --> 00:17:18,269
poor people coming out of the shades,

232
00:17:18,348 --> 00:17:20,098
like the prisoners in Fidelio,

233
00:17:20,200 --> 00:17:24,470
lugging their sick on wheelbarrows and biers,

234
00:17:24,548 --> 00:17:27,740
into the light of Christ's divinity.

235
00:17:27,828 --> 00:17:31,980
And on the left, these prosperous people,

236
00:17:32,068 --> 00:17:35,460
wondering, doubting, criticising.

237
00:17:36,588 --> 00:17:40,538
How extraordinary that this great
Tolstoyan picture of human life

238
00:17:40,640 --> 00:17:42,788
was done in the time of Richelieu

239
00:17:42,880 --> 00:17:44,828
and the beginning of Versailles.

240
00:17:47,000 --> 00:17:48,828
One can't talk about Rembrandt

241
00:17:48,920 --> 00:17:53,990
without describing the human and, if you like,
the literary element in his work.

242
00:17:55,440 --> 00:17:57,950
His mind was steeped in the Bible.

243
00:17:58,028 --> 00:18:01,460
He knew every story by heart
down to the minutest detail.

244
00:18:01,548 --> 00:18:05,660
This is one of his favourite stories
the Prodigal Son.

245
00:18:07,160 --> 00:18:11,068
Just as the early translators felt
that they had to learn Hebrew

246
00:18:11,160 --> 00:18:13,828
so that no fragment of the truth
should escape them,

247
00:18:13,920 --> 00:18:17,670
so Rembrandt made friends
with the Jews in Amsterdam

248
00:18:17,750 --> 00:18:19,420
and frequented their synagogues,

249
00:18:19,509 --> 00:18:22,460
in case he could learn something
that would shed more light

250
00:18:22,548 --> 00:18:24,818
on the early history of the Jewish people.

251
00:18:27,160 --> 00:18:29,990
But in the end, the evidence he used
for interpreting the Bible

252
00:18:30,068 --> 00:18:32,368
was the life he saw around him.

253
00:18:38,308 --> 00:18:39,818
In his drawings and etchings,

254
00:18:39,920 --> 00:18:44,548
one often doesn't know if he's recording
an observation or illustrating the scriptures,

255
00:18:44,640 --> 00:18:48,630
so much had the two experiences
grown together in his mind.

256
00:18:50,200 --> 00:18:54,828
Did Rembrandt wish to illustrate St Peter
at prayer before the raising of Tabitha?

257
00:18:54,920 --> 00:19:00,630
Or had he seen a pious old neighbour
whose attitude of devotion touched his heart

258
00:19:00,720 --> 00:19:03,548
and reminded him of the Acts of the Apostles?

259
00:19:05,750 --> 00:19:09,778
Sometimes his interpretation of human life
in Christian terms

260
00:19:09,880 --> 00:19:13,269
leads him to depict subjects
that hardly exist in the Bible,

261
00:19:13,348 --> 00:19:16,140
but that he felt convinced must have existed.

262
00:19:16,240 --> 00:19:21,470
An example is this etching of Christ preaching
the forgiveness of sins.

263
00:19:21,548 --> 00:19:23,740
It's a classical composition.

264
00:19:23,828 --> 00:19:26,180
In fact, it's based upon two famous Raphaels,

265
00:19:26,269 --> 00:19:28,460
which Rembrandt had completely assimilated.

266
00:19:28,548 --> 00:19:32,578
But how different is this small congregation

267
00:19:32,680 --> 00:19:35,630
from Raphael's ideal human specimens.

268
00:19:39,028 --> 00:19:41,940
They are, as you see, a very mixed lot.

269
00:19:42,028 --> 00:19:43,740
Some thoughtful,

270
00:19:43,828 --> 00:19:45,500
some half-hearted

271
00:19:45,588 --> 00:19:49,210
some concerned only with keeping warm
or keeping awake.

272
00:19:54,068 --> 00:19:55,940
And the child in the foreground,

273
00:19:56,028 --> 00:19:58,940
to whom the doctrine of the remission of sins
is of no interest

274
00:19:59,028 --> 00:20:01,618
is concentrating upon drawing in the dust.

275
00:20:07,200 --> 00:20:11,750
Rembrandt reinterpreted the Bible
in the light of human experience.

276
00:20:11,828 --> 00:20:16,660
But it's an emotional response
based on a belief in revealed truth.

277
00:20:16,750 --> 00:20:20,980
The greatest of his contemporaries
were looking for a different kind of truth,

278
00:20:21,068 --> 00:20:25,700
a truth that could be established by intellectual,
not emotional, means.

279
00:20:25,788 --> 00:20:29,900
This could be done
either by the accumulation of observed evidence

280
00:20:30,000 --> 00:20:32,068
or by mathematics.

281
00:20:32,160 --> 00:20:36,630
And of the two, mathematics seemed to offer
to the men of the 17th century

282
00:20:36,720 --> 00:20:38,710
the more attractive solution.

283
00:20:38,788 --> 00:20:44,259
In fact, mathematics became a kind of, religion
to the finest minds of the time

284
00:20:44,348 --> 00:20:49,338
the means of expressing a belief
that experience could be married with reason.

285
00:20:50,400 --> 00:20:52,430
The guiding spirit of this new religion

286
00:20:52,509 --> 00:20:54,740
was the French philosopher, Descartes.

287
00:20:54,828 --> 00:20:57,980
He's become a symbol of the pure intellect.

288
00:20:58,068 --> 00:21:00,140
But l find him a sympathetic figure.

289
00:21:00,240 --> 00:21:03,509
He started life as a soldier
he wrote a book on fencing',

290
00:21:03,588 --> 00:21:07,980
but he soon discovered
that all he wanted to do was think.

291
00:21:08,068 --> 00:21:11,900
Very, very rare, and most unpopular.

292
00:21:13,960 --> 00:21:17,910
Some friends came to call on him
at 11 o'clock in the morning

293
00:21:18,000 --> 00:21:19,950
and found him in bed.

294
00:21:20,028 --> 00:21:21,980
They said, "What are you doing?"

295
00:21:22,068 --> 00:21:24,778
He replied, "Thinking."

296
00:21:24,880 --> 00:21:26,710
They were furious.

297
00:21:26,788 --> 00:21:29,140
To escape interference,
he went to live in Holland.

298
00:21:29,240 --> 00:21:32,630
He said that the people of Amsterdam
were so occupied with making money,

299
00:21:32,720 --> 00:21:34,108
they would leave him alone.

300
00:21:34,200 --> 00:21:36,950
However, he continued to be
the victim of interruptions.

301
00:21:37,028 --> 00:21:38,900
And so, he moved about from place to place.

302
00:21:39,000 --> 00:21:41,910
Altogether, he moved house in Holland
24 times.

303
00:21:42,000 --> 00:21:47,710
In the end, he was run to earth by that tiresome
woman, Queen Christina of Sweden,

304
00:21:47,788 --> 00:21:49,858
who carried him off to Stockholm

305
00:21:49,960 --> 00:21:52,190
to give her lessons in the new philosophy.

306
00:21:52,269 --> 00:21:54,730
She made him get out of bed
early in the morning.

307
00:21:54,828 --> 00:21:57,700
As a result, he caught a cold and died.

308
00:21:58,548 --> 00:22:00,578
But earlier in Holland at some point,

309
00:22:00,680 --> 00:22:04,348
he evidently lived near Haarlem,
where he was painted by Frans Hals.

310
00:22:09,160 --> 00:22:13,269
He examined everything
rather as Leonardo da Vinci had done

311
00:22:13,348 --> 00:22:17,618
the foetus, the refraction of light, whirlpools...

312
00:22:17,720 --> 00:22:19,470
All the Leonardo subjects.

313
00:22:19,548 --> 00:22:23,660
These are the original illustrations
of Descartes' ideas.

314
00:22:24,680 --> 00:22:27,990
He thought that all matter
consisted of whirlpools,

315
00:22:28,068 --> 00:22:30,858
with an outer ring of large, curving vortices

316
00:22:30,960 --> 00:22:34,710
and an inner core of small globules
sucked into the centre.

317
00:22:34,788 --> 00:22:36,578
And whatever he meant by this -

318
00:22:36,680 --> 00:22:38,950
and perhaps he was only thinking of Plato -

319
00:22:39,028 --> 00:22:44,180
it's odd that he should have described exactly
Leonardo's drawings of whirlpools,

320
00:22:44,269 --> 00:22:46,220
which l suppose he had never seen.

321
00:22:49,588 --> 00:22:55,900
But in contrast
to Leonardo's restless, insatiate curiosity,

322
00:22:56,000 --> 00:22:58,460
Descartes had, almost to excess

323
00:22:58,548 --> 00:23:00,930
the French tidy-mindedness.

324
00:23:01,028 --> 00:23:05,538
All his observations were made to contribute
to a philosophic scheme.

325
00:23:06,400 --> 00:23:09,308
It was based on absolute scepticism,

326
00:23:09,400 --> 00:23:14,308
the inheritance of Montaigne's summing-up
"Que sais-je?" "What do l know?"

327
00:23:14,400 --> 00:23:17,430
Only, Descartes arrived at an answer.

328
00:23:17,509 --> 00:23:19,740
"l know that l think."

329
00:23:19,828 --> 00:23:24,460
And he turned it the other way around -
"l think, therefore l am."

330
00:23:25,680 --> 00:23:30,868
His fundamental point is that he can doubt
everything, but not that he was doubting.

331
00:23:31,750 --> 00:23:35,058
Descartes wanted to cut away
all preconceptions

332
00:23:35,160 --> 00:23:38,230
and get down to bedrock of experience,

333
00:23:38,308 --> 00:23:40,940
unaffected by custom and convention.

334
00:23:41,788 --> 00:23:46,380
Well, one needn't look far in Dutch art
to illustrate this state of mind.

335
00:23:46,960 --> 00:23:48,990
There has never been a painter

336
00:23:49,028 --> 00:23:54,150
who has stuck so rigorously
to what his optic nerve reported

337
00:23:54,240 --> 00:23:55,750
as Vermeer of Delft.

338
00:23:59,680 --> 00:24:02,269
His work is without a single prejudice

339
00:24:02,348 --> 00:24:06,019
arising from knowledge
or the convenience of a style.

340
00:24:06,108 --> 00:24:12,098
It's really quite a shock to see a picture which
has so little stylistic artifice as his view of Delft.

341
00:24:12,200 --> 00:24:14,150
It looks like a coloured photograph,

342
00:24:14,240 --> 00:24:19,828
and yet we know that it's a work
of extreme intellectual distinction.

343
00:24:19,920 --> 00:24:22,430
It not only shows the light of Holland,

344
00:24:22,509 --> 00:24:26,048
but what Descartes called
the natural light of the mind.

345
00:24:26,160 --> 00:24:29,828
In fact, Vermeer comes close to Descartes
at many points.

346
00:24:29,920 --> 00:24:33,430
First of all, in his detached, evasive character.

347
00:24:33,509 --> 00:24:36,180
Vermeer didn't change house
every three months.

348
00:24:36,269 --> 00:24:39,140
On the contrary,
he loved his house in the square at Delft,

349
00:24:39,240 --> 00:24:41,190
and he painted it continually.

350
00:24:43,440 --> 00:24:46,588
His quiet interiors are all rooms in his house.

351
00:24:46,680 --> 00:24:50,028
But he was equally suspicious of callers.

352
00:24:50,108 --> 00:24:54,259
He told one eminent collector
who had made a special journey to visit him,

353
00:24:54,348 --> 00:24:56,259
that he had no pictures to show him,

354
00:24:56,348 --> 00:24:57,818
which was just untrue,

355
00:24:57,920 --> 00:25:01,990
because when he died, his house was full
of unsold pictures of all periods.

356
00:25:03,509 --> 00:25:05,460
(MUSIC) Baroque harpsichord

357
00:25:10,920 --> 00:25:13,588
All that he wanted was tranquillity,

358
00:25:13,680 --> 00:25:16,710
in order to enjoy fine discrimination.

359
00:26:07,160 --> 00:26:09,108
"Study to be quiet."

360
00:26:09,200 --> 00:26:12,028
Ten years before this picture was painted,

361
00:26:12,108 --> 00:26:17,538
Issak Walton had inscribed these words
on the title page of The Compleat Angler.

362
00:26:17,640 --> 00:26:19,509
And in the same period,

363
00:26:19,588 --> 00:26:21,940
two religious sects had come into being -

364
00:26:22,028 --> 00:26:24,490
Quietism and the Quakers.

365
00:26:28,828 --> 00:26:31,538
As far as l know, the first painter
to feel Descartes' need

366
00:26:31,640 --> 00:26:34,230
to tidy up sensations by the use of reason

367
00:26:34,308 --> 00:26:39,298
was Pieter Saenredam
the scrupulous master of church' interiors.

368
00:26:39,400 --> 00:26:41,828
He did drawings from nature in the 1630s,

369
00:26:41,920 --> 00:26:44,380
and often kept them for ten or 15 years

370
00:26:44,480 --> 00:26:47,150
until he could give them the stillness and finality

371
00:26:47,240 --> 00:26:51,509
which make them ideal meeting places
for the Society of Friends.

372
00:26:51,588 --> 00:26:55,368
The precision with which
he places each accent -

373
00:26:55,480 --> 00:26:57,778
those dark heads, for example,

374
00:26:57,880 --> 00:26:59,828
reminds one of Seurat.

375
00:27:05,640 --> 00:27:07,068
In a picture like this,

376
00:27:07,160 --> 00:27:10,470
the balance is tilted towards reason
rather than experience.

377
00:27:11,509 --> 00:27:15,858
Vermeer manages to preserve
an air of complete naturalism.

378
00:27:15,960 --> 00:27:20,548
Yet what a masterpiece of abstract design
he creates

379
00:27:20,640 --> 00:27:24,788
out of frames and windows
and musical instruments.

380
00:27:25,788 --> 00:27:30,058
One is reminded of the most severely intellectual
of modern painters,

381
00:27:30,160 --> 00:27:32,509
his compatriot, Mondrian.

382
00:27:33,680 --> 00:27:37,548
Are Vermeer's intervals and proportions
the result of calculation?

383
00:27:37,640 --> 00:27:40,588
Or did he discover them intuitively?

384
00:27:40,680 --> 00:27:43,509
No good asking such questions.

385
00:27:43,588 --> 00:27:46,098
Vermeer had a genius for evasion.

386
00:27:47,509 --> 00:27:49,778
But as soon as one mentions Mondrian

387
00:27:49,880 --> 00:27:52,950
one remembers
that one of Vermeer's characteristics

388
00:27:53,028 --> 00:27:55,660
separates him entirely
from abstract modern painting -

389
00:27:55,750 --> 00:27:57,700
his passion for light.

390
00:28:01,108 --> 00:28:06,048
It's in this, more than anything else, that he links
up with the other great men of his time.

391
00:28:07,028 --> 00:28:11,098
All the chief exponents of civilisation
from Dante to Goethe

392
00:28:11,200 --> 00:28:13,348
had been obsessed by light.

393
00:28:13,440 --> 00:28:17,910
One could take it
as the supreme symbol of civilisation.

394
00:28:18,000 --> 00:28:20,348
But in the 17th century,

395
00:28:20,440 --> 00:28:22,710
light passed through a crucial stage.

396
00:28:23,588 --> 00:28:28,140
The perfection of the lens was giving it
new range and power.

397
00:28:29,068 --> 00:28:33,380
Vermeer himself recorded the increased
importance of scientific investigation

398
00:28:33,480 --> 00:28:35,430
in pictures like this.

399
00:28:36,348 --> 00:28:39,058
He used the utmost ingenuity

400
00:28:39,160 --> 00:28:41,308
to make us feel the movement of light.

401
00:28:41,400 --> 00:28:43,910
He loved to show it passing over a white wall,

402
00:28:44,000 --> 00:28:47,269
and then, as if to make its progress
more comprehensible,

403
00:28:47,348 --> 00:28:49,730
passing over a slightly crinkled map.

404
00:28:50,720 --> 00:28:53,278
At least four of these maps
appear in his pictures,

405
00:28:53,348 --> 00:28:56,700
and, apart from their pleasantly
light-transmitting surfaces,

406
00:28:56,788 --> 00:29:00,660
they remind us that the Dutch were
the great cartographers of the age.

407
00:29:00,750 --> 00:29:05,660
Thus the mercantile sources
of Vermeer's independence

408
00:29:05,750 --> 00:29:09,058
penetrate into the background of this quiet room.

409
00:29:10,000 --> 00:29:13,470
In his determination
to record exactly what he saw,

410
00:29:13,548 --> 00:29:19,618
Vermeer didn't at all despise those mechanical
devices of which his century was so proud.

411
00:29:19,720 --> 00:29:23,390
The man seated at table
talking to a laughing girl -

412
00:29:23,480 --> 00:29:24,950
it's a fairly early picture,

413
00:29:25,028 --> 00:29:29,098
later on, Vermeer's figures wouldn't have broken
the stillness with extrovert laughter -

414
00:29:29,200 --> 00:29:34,190
this man has the exaggerated proportions
that one sees in photography.

415
00:29:36,240 --> 00:29:40,828
l fancy that Vermeer looked through a lens
into a box

416
00:29:40,920 --> 00:29:43,190
with a piece of ground glass squared up,

417
00:29:43,269 --> 00:29:45,420
and painted exactly what he saw.

418
00:29:46,548 --> 00:29:50,250
He must have begun
this scientific practice quite early.

419
00:29:50,348 --> 00:29:53,298
One finds it in this picture
of a woman pouring milk,

420
00:29:53,400 --> 00:29:56,990
painted before he had perfected
his peculiar stillness.

421
00:29:57,880 --> 00:30:01,950
The light's rendered by those little beads
that one doesn't see with the naked eye,

422
00:30:02,028 --> 00:30:05,298
but which appear on the finder
of an old-fashioned camera.

423
00:30:10,200 --> 00:30:14,470
And yet, this scientific approach to experience
ends in poetry.

424
00:30:14,548 --> 00:30:20,578
And l suppose that this is due to an almost
mystical rapture in the perception of light.

425
00:30:24,000 --> 00:30:27,509
The enlightened tidiness
of De Hooch and Vermeer

426
00:30:27,548 --> 00:30:30,538
and the rich, imaginative, experience
of Rembrandt

427
00:30:30,640 --> 00:30:33,098
reached their zenith about the year 1660.

428
00:30:33,200 --> 00:30:34,910
And in that year,

429
00:30:35,000 --> 00:30:36,548
on the night of May 30th,

430
00:30:36,640 --> 00:30:39,828
Charles II of England dined in the Mauritshuis.

431
00:30:39,920 --> 00:30:44,190
And the next day, he embarked
from the Dutch beach at Scheveningen

432
00:30:44,269 --> 00:30:46,220
to regain his kingdom.

433
00:30:46,308 --> 00:30:49,900
And thus ended the isolation and austerity

434
00:30:50,000 --> 00:30:53,348
which had afflicted England under Cromwell
for almost 15 years.

435
00:30:53,440 --> 00:30:55,788
And as so often happens,

436
00:30:55,880 --> 00:31:00,670
a new freedom of movement
led to an outburst of pent-up energy.

437
00:31:01,950 --> 00:31:03,900
(MUSIC) PURCELL: Dido And Aeneas Act Ill

438
00:31:21,120 --> 00:31:24,028
(MUSIC) Come away, fellow sailors, come away

439
00:31:24,120 --> 00:31:25,910
(MUSIC) Your anchors beweighing

440
00:31:25,988 --> 00:31:28,978
(MUSIC) Time and tide will admit no delaying

441
00:31:29,080 --> 00:31:33,228
(MUSIC) Take a bowsey short leave
of your nymphs on the shore

442
00:31:33,308 --> 00:31:37,258
(MUSIC) And silence their mourning
with vows of returning

443
00:31:37,360 --> 00:31:41,430
(MUSIC) But never intending to visit them more

444
00:31:41,508 --> 00:31:45,340
(MUSIC) No, never intending to visit them more

445
00:31:45,440 --> 00:31:46,420
(MUSIC) No, never...

446
00:31:46,508 --> 00:31:50,498
(MUSIC) No, never intending to visit them more

447
00:31:50,600 --> 00:31:52,548
(MUSIC) Come away, come away

448
00:31:52,640 --> 00:31:55,469
(MUSIC) Come away, come away, come away

449
00:31:55,548 --> 00:31:57,420
(MUSIC) Your anchors beweighing

450
00:31:57,508 --> 00:32:00,580
(MUSIC) Time and tide admit no delaying

451
00:32:00,680 --> 00:32:04,350
(MUSIC) Take a bowsey short leave
of your nymphs on the shore

452
00:32:04,440 --> 00:32:08,430
(MUSIC) And silence their mourning
with vows of returning

453
00:32:08,508 --> 00:32:12,580
(MUSIC) But never intending to visit them more

454
00:32:12,680 --> 00:32:16,380
(MUSIC) No, never intending to visit them more

455
00:32:16,469 --> 00:32:17,420
(MUSIC) No, never...

456
00:32:17,508 --> 00:32:22,180
(MUSIC) No, never intending to visit them more

457
00:32:24,700 --> 00:32:28,450
There are usually men of genius
waiting for these moments of expansion,

458
00:32:28,528 --> 00:32:30,640
like ships waiting for a breeze.

459
00:32:30,740 --> 00:32:35,890
And, on this occasion, there was, in England,
the brilliant group of natural philosophers

460
00:32:35,980 --> 00:32:37,930
who were to form the Royal Society.

461
00:32:38,009 --> 00:32:41,000
Christopher Wren, the young geometer,

462
00:32:41,088 --> 00:32:43,390
who at that date was a professor of astronomy.

463
00:32:44,740 --> 00:32:48,769
Robert Boyle, who used always to be described
as the son of the Earl of Cork

464
00:32:48,848 --> 00:32:50,798
and the father of chemistry.

465
00:32:51,608 --> 00:32:53,838
Halley, the discoverer of comets.

466
00:32:53,940 --> 00:32:59,450
And towering above
all these remarkable scientists was Newton

467
00:32:59,528 --> 00:33:05,400
one of the three or four Englishmen whose fame
has transcended all national boundaries.

468
00:33:11,660 --> 00:33:14,118
l can't pretend that I've read the Principia.

469
00:33:14,220 --> 00:33:15,848
If l did, l wouldn't understand it

470
00:33:15,940 --> 00:33:17,808
any more than Samuel Pepys did,

471
00:33:17,900 --> 00:33:21,490
when, as President of the Royal Society,
it was handed to him for his approval.

472
00:33:21,568 --> 00:33:24,680
One must just take on trust

473
00:33:24,769 --> 00:33:28,880
that it gave a mathematical account
of the structure of the universe

474
00:33:28,980 --> 00:33:32,519
which for 300 years seemed irrefutable.

475
00:33:33,420 --> 00:33:36,009
It was both the climax of the age of observation

476
00:33:36,088 --> 00:33:38,798
and the sacred book of the next century.

477
00:33:38,900 --> 00:33:43,328
Pope, who had probably not read
as much of the Principia as l have,

478
00:33:43,420 --> 00:33:46,170
summed up the feelings of his contemporaries:

479
00:33:46,250 --> 00:33:49,950
"Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night,

480
00:33:50,048 --> 00:33:53,798
God said, let Newton be: and all was light."

481
00:33:55,140 --> 00:33:58,730
Parallel with the study of light
was the study of the stars.

482
00:33:58,808 --> 00:34:02,558
This is the Octagon Room of the original
Royal Observatory at Greenwich,

483
00:34:02,660 --> 00:34:05,088
founded, as Charles II's warrant puts it,

484
00:34:05,180 --> 00:34:08,210
"in order to the finding out
of the longitude of places,

485
00:34:08,288 --> 00:34:10,960
and for perfecting navigation and astronomy."

486
00:34:11,730 --> 00:34:14,480
And it draws together
the threads of this programme -

487
00:34:14,570 --> 00:34:20,039
light, lenses, observation,
navigation and mathematics.

488
00:34:23,780 --> 00:34:26,130
One can walk into that print

489
00:34:26,210 --> 00:34:29,400
almost exactly as one can walk
into the square at Haarlem.

490
00:34:29,500 --> 00:34:32,809
And in this bright, harmonious room,

491
00:34:32,900 --> 00:34:37,840
one seems to breathe the atmosphere
of humanised science.

492
00:34:39,500 --> 00:34:42,809
That was Flamsteed's telescope, or very like it.

493
00:34:42,900 --> 00:34:48,768
This is similar to the quadrant
with which he tried to establish the correct time.

494
00:34:49,780 --> 00:34:53,559
It was the great age of scientific instruments -

495
00:34:53,650 --> 00:34:55,880
Huygens's pendulum clock,

496
00:34:55,980 --> 00:34:57,929
Leeuwenhoek's microscope.

497
00:34:58,010 --> 00:35:00,840
Flamsteed himself made a giant sextant.

498
00:35:00,940 --> 00:35:03,730
They don't look very scientific to us.

499
00:35:03,820 --> 00:35:08,889
Indeed, the telescopes really look like
something out of a ballet.

500
00:35:09,780 --> 00:35:12,650
One can't see through them at all.
At least, l can't.

501
00:35:14,500 --> 00:35:19,849
But, nevertheless, the telescope, invented
in Holland although perfected by Galileo,

502
00:35:19,940 --> 00:35:24,130
seemed to bring the heavenly bodies
within reach of understanding.

503
00:35:24,210 --> 00:35:27,518
This is the view of the moon
which Newton would have seen.

504
00:35:28,340 --> 00:35:31,690
And the microscope allowed a Dutch scientist,
named Leeuwenhoek

505
00:35:31,780 --> 00:35:34,730
to discover new worlds in a drop of water.

506
00:35:35,570 --> 00:35:37,869
This ferocious monster is a water flea.

507
00:35:41,530 --> 00:35:45,559
What beautiful pieces of design
and craftsmanship astrolabes are,

508
00:35:45,650 --> 00:35:48,480
and continued to be for 400 years.

509
00:35:52,260 --> 00:35:58,440
And this armillary sphere is really
what we think of as a work of art, a mobile.

510
00:35:58,530 --> 00:36:03,199
By twiddling it around, one can produce
a kind of visual counterpoint.

511
00:36:05,380 --> 00:36:10,170
Even this equinoctial dial shows the impress
of human personality,

512
00:36:10,260 --> 00:36:12,329
what you can call a style.

513
00:36:13,340 --> 00:36:15,719
And what about this diptych dial?

514
00:36:16,530 --> 00:36:18,989
One can't imagine a prettier bibelot,

515
00:36:19,090 --> 00:36:22,518
and yet, it was genuinely scientific...

516
00:36:23,300 --> 00:36:24,570
..l suppose.

517
00:36:27,050 --> 00:36:29,639
Art and science haven't yet drawn apart.

518
00:36:29,730 --> 00:36:33,639
And these instruments
are not only means to an end but symbols.

519
00:36:33,730 --> 00:36:37,599
Symbols of hope that Man might learn
to master his environment

520
00:36:37,690 --> 00:36:39,760
and create a more reasonable society.

521
00:36:40,530 --> 00:36:43,760
And such they remained
until the end of the 19th century.

522
00:36:43,860 --> 00:36:47,969
When Tennyson was told
that a Brahmin had destroyed a microscope

523
00:36:48,050 --> 00:36:50,429
because it revealed secrets
Man should not know

524
00:36:50,530 --> 00:36:52,480
he was profoundly shocked.

525
00:36:52,570 --> 00:36:56,110
Only in the last 60 years or so,

526
00:36:56,210 --> 00:36:57,800
have we begun to feel

527
00:36:57,900 --> 00:37:01,329
that the descendants
of these beautiful, shining objects

528
00:37:01,420 --> 00:37:03,690
may destroy us.

529
00:37:06,780 --> 00:37:11,050
This room full of light,
this shining enclosure of space,

530
00:37:11,130 --> 00:37:13,559
was designed by Sir Christopher Wren.

531
00:37:13,650 --> 00:37:18,079
It was built on the spur of a hill
overlooking the old palace of Greenwich.

532
00:37:18,170 --> 00:37:23,000
This, too, was rebuilt by Wren,
transformed from a palace into a naval hospital.

533
00:37:27,340 --> 00:37:31,250
How much of what we see is from his design
is hard to say.

534
00:37:31,340 --> 00:37:33,090
By the time the buildings were going up,

535
00:37:33,170 --> 00:37:37,440
he was prepared to leave their execution to his
two very able assistants at the Board of Works,

536
00:37:37,530 --> 00:37:40,039
Sir John Vanbrugh and Nicholas Hawksmoor.

537
00:37:40,130 --> 00:37:43,320
But he certainly provided the plan.

538
00:37:43,420 --> 00:37:48,849
And the result is the greatest architectural unit
built in England since the Middle Ages.

539
00:37:48,940 --> 00:37:51,768
It's sober without being dull,

540
00:37:51,860 --> 00:37:54,420
massive without being oppressive.

541
00:37:57,010 --> 00:37:58,639
What is civilisation?

542
00:37:58,730 --> 00:38:03,360
A state of mind where it's thought desirable
for a naval hospital to look like this,

543
00:38:03,460 --> 00:38:06,809
and for inmates to dine
in a splendidly decorated hall,

544
00:38:06,900 --> 00:38:09,280
in fact, one of the finest rooms in England,

545
00:38:09,380 --> 00:38:12,768
with a magnificent painted ceiling
in the Baroque manner.

546
00:38:12,860 --> 00:38:14,809
(MUSIC) PURCELL: Trumpet Sonata

547
00:39:29,780 --> 00:39:31,610
By the time this building was completed,

548
00:39:31,690 --> 00:39:34,920
Wren had long been
the most famous architect in England.

549
00:39:35,010 --> 00:39:37,000
But as a young man,

550
00:39:37,090 --> 00:39:40,559
people had thought of him
only as a mathematician and an astronomer.

551
00:39:40,650 --> 00:39:44,320
Why, at the age of 30, he took up architecture,

552
00:39:44,420 --> 00:39:46,719
isn't altogether clear.

553
00:39:47,530 --> 00:39:53,159
l suppose he wanted to give, visible form
to his solutions

554
00:39:53,260 --> 00:39:55,489
mechanical and geometrical solutions.

555
00:39:55,570 --> 00:39:59,268
But of course he had to learn
the rudiments of style.

556
00:39:59,380 --> 00:40:02,329
And so, he bought some books
and he went to France

557
00:40:02,420 --> 00:40:04,570
drew the buildings and met leading architects.

558
00:40:04,650 --> 00:40:07,480
He even met Bernini
who was in Paris at the time

559
00:40:07,570 --> 00:40:10,030
and he saw Bernini's drawing for the Louvre.

560
00:40:10,130 --> 00:40:12,590
"l would have given my skin for it," he said,

561
00:40:12,690 --> 00:40:15,518
"but the reserved old Italian
gave me but a view."

562
00:40:15,610 --> 00:40:18,960
On his return, he was consulted as an engineer,

563
00:40:19,050 --> 00:40:22,000
about old St Paul's
which was in danger of collapsing.

564
00:40:22,090 --> 00:40:25,280
He proposed replacing the tower by a dome.

565
00:40:25,380 --> 00:40:28,849
But before this very questionable project
could be considered

566
00:40:28,940 --> 00:40:31,730
the Fire of London broke out in 1666.

567
00:40:31,820 --> 00:40:34,170
It ended on September 5th.

568
00:40:34,260 --> 00:40:38,610
And six days later, Wren submitted a plan
for rebuilding the city.

569
00:40:38,690 --> 00:40:44,000
And only then was the ingenious Dr Wren
fully committed to architecture.

570
00:40:45,260 --> 00:40:48,449
Ingenious is the word
for the results that followed.

571
00:40:48,530 --> 00:40:50,239
The 30 new city churches.

572
00:40:50,340 --> 00:40:53,449
Each is the solution of a different problem.

573
00:40:53,530 --> 00:40:55,989
Wren's powers of invention never failed.

574
00:40:56,860 --> 00:41:00,639
But when he came to the crown and centre
of the whole scheme

575
00:41:00,730 --> 00:41:02,320
the new St Paul's

576
00:41:02,420 --> 00:41:04,929
then he revealed
something more than ingenuity.

577
00:41:05,780 --> 00:41:07,650
(MUSIC) PURCELL: The Gordian Knot Untied

578
00:42:46,130 --> 00:42:50,989
Wren's buildings show us
that mathematics, measurement, observation

579
00:42:51,090 --> 00:42:54,559
all that goes to make up
the philosophy of science,

580
00:42:54,650 --> 00:42:57,760
wasn't hostile to architecture, nor to music

581
00:42:57,860 --> 00:43:01,639
because this was the age of one of the greatest
English composers, William Purcell,

582
00:43:01,730 --> 00:43:05,320
whose noble strains have accompanied
our inspection of Wren's buildings.

583
00:43:06,690 --> 00:43:10,599
But what was the effect
of the scientific attitude on poetry?

584
00:43:10,690 --> 00:43:14,000
Well, at first, l think it was harmless

585
00:43:14,090 --> 00:43:15,760
even beneficial.

586
00:43:15,860 --> 00:43:19,768
When Vaughan wrote,
"l saw Eternity the other night,

587
00:43:19,860 --> 00:43:24,449
Like a great ring of pure and endless light,
All calm as it was bright,"

588
00:43:24,530 --> 00:43:27,280
he was giving poetic expression

589
00:43:27,380 --> 00:43:31,849
to the same impulse that induced Flamsteed
to look through his telescope.

590
00:43:33,130 --> 00:43:38,960
l don't suppose that all the members of the
Royal Society were hostile to the imagination.

591
00:43:39,050 --> 00:43:42,670
After all, most of them remained
professing Christians.

592
00:43:42,780 --> 00:43:45,809
In fact, Newton spent - we could say, wasted -

593
00:43:45,900 --> 00:43:48,730
a lot of his time on Biblical studies.

594
00:43:48,820 --> 00:43:52,289
And they continued to use a celestial globe

595
00:43:52,380 --> 00:43:55,969
in which the constellations were grouped
in the form of men and animals.

596
00:43:56,050 --> 00:43:59,119
They continued to accept
the kind of personifications

597
00:43:59,210 --> 00:44:01,510
that one gets on the ceiling of the Painted Hall,

598
00:44:01,610 --> 00:44:07,159
on which gods and goddesses associate
with Flamsteed, the Astronomer Royal.

599
00:44:12,340 --> 00:44:14,289
But all the same

600
00:44:14,380 --> 00:44:17,170
they recognised that all these were fancies

601
00:44:17,260 --> 00:44:19,409
and that reality lay elsewhere,

602
00:44:19,500 --> 00:44:22,250
in the realm of measurement and observation.

603
00:44:23,300 --> 00:44:28,210
A rather ridiculous character called Spratt,
who wrote a "History of the Royal Society",

604
00:44:28,300 --> 00:44:30,730
published the same year
as Milton's Paradise Lost

605
00:44:30,820 --> 00:44:34,809
said, "Poetry is the parent of superstition."

606
00:44:36,010 --> 00:44:40,949
And so began that division
between scientific truth and imagination

607
00:44:41,050 --> 00:44:43,559
which was to kill poetic drama

608
00:44:43,650 --> 00:44:48,840
and give a slight feeling of artificiality
to all poetry during the next 100 years.

609
00:44:48,940 --> 00:44:51,570
However, there was a compensation -

610
00:44:51,650 --> 00:44:55,268
the emergence of a clear, workable prose.

611
00:44:55,380 --> 00:44:58,210
It was a tool of the new philosophy,

612
00:44:58,300 --> 00:45:02,329
almost as much as Stevins's decimal system
was a tool of the new mathematics.

613
00:45:02,420 --> 00:45:05,329
This was particularly true of France.

614
00:45:05,420 --> 00:45:09,768
For about 300 years, French prose was the form

615
00:45:09,860 --> 00:45:14,210
in which the European intelligence
shaped and communicated its thoughts

616
00:45:14,300 --> 00:45:19,489
about history, diplomacy, definition, criticism,
human relationships.

617
00:45:19,570 --> 00:45:21,679
Everything, really, except metaphysics.

618
00:45:21,780 --> 00:45:27,050
It's arguable that the non-existence
of a clear, concrete German prose

619
00:45:27,130 --> 00:45:31,039
has been one of the chief disasters
of European civilisation.

620
00:45:32,900 --> 00:45:37,050
There's no doubt that, in its first glorious century,

621
00:45:37,130 --> 00:45:39,280
the appeal to experience

622
00:45:39,380 --> 00:45:44,449
achieved a triumph for the Western mind.

623
00:45:45,380 --> 00:45:47,329
Between Descartes and Newton

624
00:45:47,420 --> 00:45:51,170
Western man created
those instruments of thought

625
00:45:51,260 --> 00:45:54,170
that set him apart
from the other peoples of the world.

626
00:45:54,260 --> 00:45:59,199
And if you look at the average
19th-century historian, a man like Buckle,

627
00:45:59,300 --> 00:46:05,530
you'll find that, to him, European civilisation
seems almost to begin with this achievement.

628
00:46:06,690 --> 00:46:10,280
The strange thing is that none of these writers,
except perhaps Ruskin,

629
00:46:10,380 --> 00:46:14,690
seemed to notice that the triumph
of rational philosophy had resulted

630
00:46:14,780 --> 00:46:16,768
in a new form of barbarism.

631
00:46:17,940 --> 00:46:21,639
If l look beyond the order
of Wren's naval hospital,

632
00:46:21,730 --> 00:46:25,559
l see stretching as far as the eye can reach

633
00:46:25,650 --> 00:46:30,480
the squalid disorder of industrial society.

634
00:46:34,530 --> 00:46:37,400
It's grown up as a result of the same conditions

635
00:46:37,500 --> 00:46:41,119
that allowed the Dutch to build
their beautiful towns and support their painters

636
00:46:41,210 --> 00:46:42,960
and print the works of philosophers.

637
00:46:43,050 --> 00:46:45,320
Fluid capital, a free economy,

638
00:46:45,420 --> 00:46:48,960
a flow of exports and imports,
a dislike of interference

639
00:46:49,050 --> 00:46:50,639
a belief in cause and effect.

640
00:46:51,650 --> 00:46:54,760
Well, every civilisation seems
to have its nemesis

641
00:46:54,860 --> 00:46:59,690
not only because the first, bright impulses
become tarnished by greed and laziness,

642
00:46:59,780 --> 00:47:01,730
but because of unpredictables.

643
00:47:01,820 --> 00:47:05,599
In this case, the unpredictable
was the growth of population.

644
00:47:06,500 --> 00:47:11,250
The greedy became greedier,
the ignorant lost touch with traditional skills,

645
00:47:11,340 --> 00:47:15,039
and the light of experience narrowed its beam

646
00:47:15,130 --> 00:47:21,760
so that a grand design like Greenwich
became simply a waste of money.

647
00:47:21,860 --> 00:47:23,809
(MUSIC) PURCELL: Trumpet Sonata