SCIENCE AND CULTURE. 167 



The period of the Renascence is commonly called that of the " Re- 

 vival of Letters," as if the influences then brought to bear upon the 

 mind of western Europe had been wholly exhausted in the field of 

 literature. I think it is very commonly forgotten that the revival of 

 science, effected by the same agency, although less conspicuous, was 

 not less momentous. In fact, the few and scattered students of Nature 

 of that day picked up the clew to her secrets exactly as it fell from the 

 hands of the Greeks a thousand years before. The foundations of 

 mathematics were so well laid by them that our children learn their 

 geometry from a book written for the schools of Alexandria two thou- 

 sand years ago. Modern astronomy is the natural continuation and 

 development of the work of Hipj)archus and of Ptolemy ; modern 

 physics of that of Democritus and Archimedes ; it was long before 

 modern biological science outgrew the knowledge bequeathed to us by 

 Aristotle, Theophrastus, and Galen. 



We can not know all the best thoughts and sayings of the Greeks 

 unless we know what they thought about natural phenomena. We 

 can not fully apprehend their criticism of life unless we understand 

 the extent to which that criticism was affected by scientific concep- 

 tions. We falsely pretend to be the inheritors of their culture, unless 

 we are penetrated, as the best minds among them were, with an un- 

 hesitating faith that the free employment of reason, in accordance 

 with scientific method, is the sole guide to truth. 



Thus I venture to think that the pretensions of our modern Hu- 

 manists to the possession of the monopoly of culture and to the ex- 

 clusive inheritance of the spirit of antiquity must be abated, if not 

 abandoned. But I should be very sorry that anything I have said 

 should be taken to imply a desire on my part to depreciate the value 

 of classical education, as it might be and as it sometimes is. The 

 native capacities of mankind vary no less than their opportunities ; 

 and, while culture is one, the road by which one man may best reach 

 it is widely different from that which is most advantageous to an- 

 other. Again, while scientific education is yet inchoate and tentative, 

 classical education is thoroughly well organized upon the pi-actical 

 experience of generations of teachers. So that, given ample time for 

 learning and destination for ordinary life, or for a literary career, I do 

 not think that a young Englishman in search of culture can do better 

 than follow the course usually marked out for him, supplementing its 

 deficiencies by his own efforts. 



But for those who mean to make science their serious occupation ; 

 or who intend to follow the profession of medicine ; or who have to 

 enter early uj^on the business of life for all these, in my opinion, 

 classical ediication is a mistake ; and it is for that reason that I am 

 glad to see " mere literary education and instruction " shut out from 

 the curriculum of Sir Josiah Mason's College, seeing that its inclusion 

 would probably lead to the introduction of the ordinary smattering of 



