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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



great confederation bound to a joint 

 action and working to a common re- 

 sult; and whose members have for 

 their common outfit a knowledge of 

 Greek, Bo man, and Eastern antiquity 

 and of one another. Special local and 

 temporary advantages being put out ot 

 account, that modern nation will in the 

 intellectual and spiritual sphere make 

 most progress which most thoroughly 

 carries out this programme." 



From this Professor Huxley dis- 

 sents and declares that he finds himself 

 " wholly unable to admit that either 

 nations or individuals will really ad- 

 vance, if their common outfit draws 

 nothing from the stores of physical 

 science. An army without weapons of 

 precision, and with no particular base 

 of operations, might more hopefully 

 enter upon a campaign on the Khine, 

 than a man devoid of knowledge of 

 what physical science has done in the 

 last century upon a criticism of life." 



To this Mr. Arnold replies by flatly 

 repudiating the accepted interpretation 

 of the scope of literary culture ; lie 

 would even so widen it as to include all 

 science. lie says : " When I speak of 

 knowing Greek and Eoman antiquity 

 as a help to knowing ourselves and the 

 world, I mean more than a knowledge 

 of so much vocabulary, so much gram- 

 mar, so many portions of authors in the 

 Greek and Latin languages. I mean 

 knowing the Greeks and Eomans, and 

 their life and genius, and what they 

 were and did in the world. . . . By 

 knowing modern nations, I mean not 

 merely knowing their belles-lettres, but 

 knowing also what has been done by 

 such men as Copernicus, Galileo, New- 

 ton, Darwin." And further, "in the 

 best that has been thought and said in 

 the world, I certainly include what in 

 modern times has been thought and 

 said by the great observers and knowers 

 of nature." That is, science disappears 

 as a separate intellectual interest by 

 its complete absorption in literature: 

 neat but unsatisfactory. 



Mr. Arnold is quite aware of his 

 disadvantage in dealing with Professor 

 Huxley, who is strong in both litera- 

 ture and science, and he repeatedly re- 

 fers to the slenderness and deficiency 

 of his own scientific attainments. But, 

 had he been more perfectly aware of 

 them, he would hardly have ventured 

 upon this mode of escaping from the 

 issues that have arisen between literary 

 and scientific culture. Had he better 

 understood what is meant by the scien- 

 tific method, he would not have tried 

 to stretch the literary method so as to 

 embrace and incorporate it. 



Without asserting that the relations 

 of these two methods of culture are es- 

 sentially antagonistic, it remains true 

 that they are so profoundly different 

 that they are not to be confounded or 

 identified. By literature we mean, and 

 rightly mean, the study of books of 

 language, of the arts of expression and 

 criticism, and familiarity with the most 

 perfect written productions, as such, 

 whether in prose or poetry, that have 

 been produced in all time. And liter- 

 ature as a method of mental culture is 

 simply a training in these Various ac- 

 quisitions and exercises. 



But the scientific method which has 

 arisen in modern times began in an 

 open and declared revolt against this 

 mode of occupying the human mind. 

 It involved new objects, new proced- 

 ures, and new disciplines of thought. 

 Seeing that the mind for ages had been 

 arrested at verbal studies, and had 

 failed in the production of solid knowl- 

 edge, men began to demand an advance 

 to the actual study of things. This is 

 the essence of the scientific method, 

 and it has achieved its great results 

 only by repudiating the old literary 

 occupations, and proceeding directly to 

 the research of nature. The sciences 

 have arisen, knowledge has been ex- 

 tended, power over nature conferred, 

 and a new civilization created only by 

 concentrating thought upon the reali- 

 ties of experience instead of studying 



