740 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



said, is quite incompetent to discuss the comparative merits of letters 

 and natural science as means of education. His incompetence, how- 

 ever, if he attempts the discussion but is really incompetent for it 

 will be abundantly visible ; nobody will be taken in ; he will have 

 plenty of sharp observers and critics to save mankind from that dan- 

 ger. But the line I am going to follow is, as you will soon discover, 

 so extremely simple that perhaps it may be followed without failure 

 even by one who for a more ambitious line of discussion would be 

 quite incompetent. 



Some of you may have met with a phrase of mine which has been 

 the object of a good deal of comment ; an observation to the effect 

 that in our culture, the aim being to know ourselves and the world, 

 we have, as the means to this end, to know the best which has been 

 thought and said in the world. Professor Huxley, in his discourse at 

 the opening of Sir Josiah Mason's college, laying hold of this phrase, 

 expanded it by quoting some more words of mine, which are these : 

 " Europe is to be regarded as now being, for intellectual and spiritual 

 purposes, one great confederation, bound to a joint action and work- 

 ing to a common result ; and whose members have for their common 

 outfit a knowledge of Greek, Roman, and Eastern antiquity, and of 

 one another. Special local and temporary advantages being put out 

 of account, that modern nation will, in the intellectual and spiritual 

 sphere, make most progress which most thoroughly carries out this 

 programme." 



Now on my phrase, thus enlarged, Professor Huxley remarks that 

 I assert literature to contain the materials which suffice for making 

 us know ourselves and the world. But it is not by any means clear, 

 says he, that, after having learned all which ancient and modern litera- 

 tures have to tell us, we have laid a sufficiently broad and deep foun- 

 dation for that criticism of life which constitutes culture. On the 

 contrary, Professor Huxley declares that he finds himself " wholly un- 

 able to admit that either nations or individuals will really advance, 

 if their common outfit draws nothing from the stores of physical sci- 

 ence. An army without weapons of precision and with no particular 

 base of operations might more hopefully enter upon a campaign on the 

 Rhine than a man devoid of a knowledge of what physical science has 

 done in the last century upon a criticism of life." 



This shows how needful it is, for those who are to discuss a matter 

 together, to have a common understanding as to the sense of the terms 

 they employ how needful, and how difficult. What Professor Huxley 

 says implies just the reproach which is so often brought against the 

 study of belles-lettres, as they are called : that the study is an elegant 

 one, but slight and ineffectual ; a smattering of Greek and Latin and 

 other ornamental things, of little use for any one whose object is to 

 get at truth. So, too, M. Renan talks of the " superficial humanism " 



