LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. 747 



Professor Huxley holds up to scorn mediaeval education, with its 

 neglect of the knowledge of nature, its poverty of literary studies, 

 its formal logic devoted to " showing how and why that which the 

 Church said was true must be true." But the great mediaeval univer- 

 sities were not brought into being, we may be sure, by the zeal for 

 giving a jejune and contemptible education. Kings have been our 

 nursing fathers, and queens have been our nursing mothers, but not 

 for this. Our universities came into being because the supposed 

 knowledge delivered by Scripture and the Church so deeply engaged 

 men's hearts, and so simply, easily, and powerfully related itself to 

 the desire for conduct, the desire for beauty the general desire in 

 men, as Diotima said, that good should be for ever present to them. 

 All other knowledge was dominated by this supposed knowledge and 

 was subordinated to it, because of the surpassing strength of the hold 

 which it gained upon men's affections by allying itself profoundly 

 with their sense for conduct and their sense for beauty. 



But now, says Professor Huxley, conceptions of the universe 

 fatal to the notions held by our forefathers have been forced upon us 

 by physical science. Grant to him that they are thus fatal, that they 

 must and will become current everywhere, and that every one will 

 finally perceive them to be fatal to the beliefs of our forefathers. 

 The need of humane letters, as they are truly called, because they 

 serve the paramount desire in men that good should be for ever 

 present to them the need of humane letters to establish a relation 

 between the new conceptions and our instinct for beauty, our instinct 

 for conduct, is only the more visible. The middle age could do with- 

 out humane letters, as it could do without the study of nature, because 

 its supposed knowledge was made to engage its emotions so power- 

 fully. Grant that the supposed knowledge disappears, its power of 

 being made to engage the emotions will of course disappear along 

 with it but the emotions will remain. Now, if we find by experience 

 that humane letters have an undeniable power of engaging the emo- 

 tions, the importance of humane letters in man's training becomes not 

 less, but greater, in proportion to the success of science in extirpating 

 what it calls "mediaeval thinking." 



Have humane letters, have poetry and eloquence, the power here 

 attributed to them of engaging the emotions, and how do they exer- 

 cise it? and, if they have it and exercise it, how do they exercise it in 

 relating the results of natural science to man's sense for conduct, his 

 sense for beauty ? All these questions may be asked. First, have 

 poetry and eloquence the power of calling out the emotions ? The 

 appeal is to experience. Experience shows us that for the vast major- 

 ity of men, for mankind in general, they have the power. Next, how 

 do they exercise it ? And this is perhaps a case for applying the 

 Preacher's words : " Though a man labor to seek it out, yet he shall 

 not find it ; yea) further, though a wise man think to know it, yet 



