EDITOR'S TABLE. 



125 



us necessary to be taken into account before 

 we acquiesce in the view of science and hu- 

 manism as two litigant parties, or attempt to 

 pass a final judgment upon their alleged 

 strife. 



It may seem a strange thing to say, but 

 Professor Huxley has underrated the strength 

 and the victories of science. They are not 

 confined to the bounds of natural history or 

 physics, or to any or every branch of what we 

 call the natural sciences. The modern spirit 

 of science is too mighty and subtile not to 

 penetratt, into every region of the field of hu- 

 man knowledge. It is transforming and re- 

 quickening the humanities themselves ; and 

 we make bold to say that classical studies, so 

 far from waning before the light of science, 

 are awakening and waxing to a new Renais- 

 sance of which not we, but our children and 

 children's children, will see the full splendor. 

 What is it that Sir Josiah Mason's foundation 

 excludes, and in Professor Huxley's judgment 

 rightly, from the benefits and encouragement 

 of his bounty ? " Mere literary education and 

 instruction," such mere drilling in language 

 as until a recent date was understood to be 

 the staple of our so-called classical learning. 

 But our universities are now awake to the 

 truth that knowledge of the ancient languages 

 is an instrument, not an end in itself. The 

 end is another kind of knowledge, and knowl- 

 edge not undeserving to be compared for 

 worth with the knowledge of things and of 

 nature. It is the knowledge of man in the 

 works of his hands and his thought, of the 

 men from whom we inherit our laws, our art, 

 and our civilization ; the praise of famous men, 

 and our fathers that begat us. Socrates and 

 Plato, the fathers of philosophy ; Pericles, 

 the father of statesmanship ; Alexander, the 

 father of conquering civilization ; Ulpian and 

 Papinian, the fathers of scientific law ; Trajan 

 and the Antonines, of administration and 

 government ; Homer, the father of poetry ; 

 Phidias and Praxiteles, of sculpture these 

 last the masters' of all followers in their craft 

 unto this day and Aristotle, the father of 

 science itself ; surely of these men and their 

 work we can not know too mueh, and even a 

 little knowledge of them would be ill ex- 

 changed, for a man who does not mean to be 

 a chemist, for a little knowledge of the atomic 

 weights of elements. 



But {his, some one will say, is not what 

 comes of our so-called classical education ; 

 what we get from our classical teachers is only 

 verse-grinding, scraps and odds and ends of 

 half-understood Latin and Greek, and a gen- 

 eral contempt for knowledge that is not at 

 Latin and Greek. This has been only too 



true ; but we hope it will not be true much 

 longer. Cambridge, the head and front of the 

 old verbal scholarship, is transforming her 

 classical curriculum. Not through mere lin- 

 guistic attainments, but through scientific phi- 

 lology, scientific archaeology, scientific study 

 of ancient history and philosophy , will hence- 

 forth lie the road to her highest honors. "We 

 shall no longer have accomplished classical 

 scholars who stand mute before a coin or an 

 inscription, and can not tell a work of the 

 school of Phidias or Praxiteles from a late 

 Asiatic or Eoman imitation. Let the teachers 

 of natural science look to it on their side that 

 their own special studies do not degenerate 

 into mere book-work, such barren catalogues 

 of undigested facts and such an empty show 

 of paper knowledge as Professor Huxley lifts 

 up no uncertain voice against. Then, when 

 at last a true and lively knowledge of man 

 and of his history goes hand in hand with a 

 true and lively knowledge of Nature and her 

 works, our schools will produce results worthy 

 of their noble means, and science and culture 

 will be no longer names to bandy in contro- 

 versy, but firm and inseparable allies. Science 

 has come upon our humanists as from a re- 

 gion of mystery, like the nameless champion 

 of the legend, clad in magical armor and 

 wielding invincible weapons. But the cham- 

 pion is a friend and deliverer ; well for them 

 that receive him, and ill for them that in rash- 

 ness and little faith repel him. But is there 

 not already a working alliance ? Are modern 

 philology and archaeology "mere literary ed- 

 ucation and instruction " ? "We conceive not ; 

 and we call Professor Huxley himself to wit- 

 ness. In his Aberdeen address he expresses 

 the wish that there should be a Professorship 

 of Fine Arts in every university, and that its 

 functions should somehow be regularly con- 

 nected with the arts curriculum. We are 

 happy to think that this is exactly what is 

 being done, or in a fair way to be done, at 

 Cambridge. The study of classical antiquity 

 through classical art is there rapidly becom- 

 ing a living and working branch of the gen- 

 eral classical studies of the university. But 

 this, some will again say, is dreaming of the 

 future. Are we satisfied with the present ? 

 Are we content that there should be univer- 

 sity dignitaries who do not know one end 

 of the solar spectrum from the other, and 

 bishops who show their competence to criti- 

 cise biological theories by supposing that the 

 blood-corpuscles are formed by coagulation 

 after death ? We answer, unquestionably not. 

 We hold that the elements of natural knowl- 

 edge should be an integral part of general edu- 

 cation. But we would make room for them 



