SCIENCE AS A MEANS OF HUMAN CULTURE. 671 



and only as it thus comes is it entitled to be considered real knowl- 

 edge. We now study subjects for what there is in them, so that 

 the knowledge gained may be a help to thought ; and the enthu- 

 siasm thus acquired begets new ideas. The youthful mind re- 

 quires something tangible to grasp, or the reasoning faculties are 

 slowly developed. In all scientific works, facts are used as an 

 index to ideas, which is not a tax upon memory, but a stimulus to 

 the intellect. Still " it is not for its facts, but for the significance 

 of its facts, that science is valuable." 



The time is forever past of the old idea that the study of the 

 ancient classics, mathematics, and humanities is the only educa- 

 tion. And the once popular notion that a broadly educated man 

 is a sort of intellectual reservoir that can be tapped for all sorts 

 of miscellaneous information is equally absurd. The social con- 

 sideration which once attached to persons supposed to know Latin 

 and Greek, whether gentlemen or not, has been abandoned, and 

 the test of social rank now is what they are and not what they are 

 supposed to be. 



The benefits generally claimed to come from a classical educa- 

 tion are that it affords an admirable intellectual training, opens 

 up a magnificent literature, and contributes very largely to the 

 right understanding of our native tongue. This is certainly all 

 true, but such intellectual training is derived as easily from other 

 sources, for when the modern languages are taught systematically 

 they are useful in the same way, if not in the same degree ; while 

 the natural and physical sciences are admitted now by our best 

 thinkers to be the most powerful agents in the development 

 of the intellect. Their literature, to the great majority of uni- 

 versity men is unknown ; but the scholar who has laboriously 

 studied for a dozen years or more over his Virgil and Sophocles 

 is generally but little better acquainted with ancient literature 

 than he who has spent a year upon adequate translations of the 

 famous originals. And the understanding it gives us of our own 

 language, which in utility means accuracj'', grace, and ease of ex- 

 pression, might, I dare say, be more easily attained in boyhood 

 through formative habits, if guided scientifically, rather than 

 through the endless mysteries of syntax and inflection. 



The study of the classics is no longer essential, except in tradi- 

 tional schools. A well-known New York book merchant recently 

 said, when asked about the demands for works on Latin and Greek : 

 " We keep very few of the classics, and it doesn't pay to stock up 

 any more. There is absolutely no demand for them, and a per- 

 fectly equipped bookstore can be sustained nowadays without a 

 single classic on the shelves. Probably five times a year we have 

 a call for one, and it doesn't pay to keep a stock for these stray 

 demands." How many modern orators employ quotations from 



