200 



HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



constant. The subject is discussed in my Science 

 Notes in the "Gentleman's Magazine" of this 

 month. 



In reference to Professor Langley's volume above 

 named, it may be interesting to the readers of 

 Science-Gossip to learn that it is published as 

 No. 15 of the "Professional Papers of the Signal 

 Service," under the authority of the Secretary of 

 War, by the War Department of the United States 

 Government, and that these Signal Service volumes 

 form only one of a series of purely scientific works 

 issued from the Government Printing Office at 

 Washington. They are all beautifully printed on 

 excellent paper, and abundantly illustrated with 

 engravings, and are gratuitously distributed, post 

 free, to Englishmen who, like myself, are known 

 to be students of the subjects they include. Every 

 time I receive one of these volumes (and I have 

 received a large number), I blush with shame at the 

 contemptible higgling of our own Government in 

 the publication of such papers as the Reports of The 

 Challenger Expedition, which, after a pitiful delay, 

 are at last issued at a price that any private publisher 

 would regard as grossly extortionate. There was no 

 lack of liberality in fitting out the expedition, and 

 providing snug berths and luxurious free yachting 

 appliances for certain privileged gentlemen, but 

 immediately the general interests of science and 

 those of the whole nation are concerned in their publi- 

 cation an extravagance of economy is displayed. 



Dr. Keegan writes as follows : "I am glad to find 

 {p. 151 of July number) that Mr. W. Mattieu 

 Williams disclaims any desire to see literature 

 excluded from the curriculum of modern education. 

 I am sorry that my remarks were misunderstood ; 

 but I am firmly convinced that studies and intellectual 

 pursuits that fail to adequately awaken in man " the 

 sublime consciousness of his own humanity," are 

 defective as educational engines. I quite agree with 

 Mr. Williams as to the superiority of the Greek ideal 

 of life and actual civilisation as embodied in the 

 sublime literature of that remarkable people ; and I 

 am disposed to think that the old Roman literature 

 was so far influenced thereby that it was not really 

 national, strictly speaking. Its being more nearly 

 allied to modern tongues, and its acquirement being 

 rather the superior as an intellectual exercise, are 

 probably the chief reasons why it is more deeply 

 studied than the Greek. With regard to ' ' monkish 

 inheritance," many people nowadays are beginning 

 to opine that those old ecclesiastics were not alto- 

 gether "ignorant of everything but the language of 

 the Church." We might even hazard a surmise that 

 some of them would turn in their graves if they 

 became cognizant of sundry matters and proceedings 

 of recent date relative to our universities and semi- 

 naries of learning. For it would seem that the study 

 of material science, with a view to the propagation 

 of the industrial arts, threatens, in this terrifically 



enlightened nineteeth century, to eclipse culture in a 

 broad and liberal sense." — P. Q. Keegan, LL.D. 



It is evident enough that we are perfectly agreed 

 concerning the educational object to be attained, we 

 differ however very widely as regards the means. I 

 have struggled very hard to discover when and where 

 " the sublime consciousness of his own humanity" 

 comes into the soul of a boy while he is struggling 

 with the declensions of Latin nouns and the irregu- 

 larities of Greek verbs, or during any part of the 

 years which he occupies in qualifying himself to write 

 bad Latin prose, and still worse Latin verse. Or 

 supposing that by sacrificing the most precious 

 period of his intellectual development he attains 

 sufficient vernacular intimacy with Latin and Greek 

 to be able to appreciate their untranslatable peculi- 

 arities, I cannot understand how such profound 

 intimacy with the unspeakable obscenities of the 

 Pagan mythology can operate otherwise than injuri- 

 ously upon his moral growth. It must be remem- 

 bered that besides the books which, like Ovid's 

 Metamorphoses, are devoted exclusively to telling the 

 details of the foul fables, the whole of the classic 

 literature (excluding the mathematics and philosophy 

 of the Greek scientists) is pestiferously saturated with 

 allusions to the dirty doings of Jupiter and his very 

 immoral Olympian associates. 



What a ballad of butchery is Homer's Iliad ! 

 What mean-spirited braggart bullies are his heroes ! 

 who taunt and torture their fallen dying foes with 

 malignant insults. Granted that this is historically 

 correct, that the warriors of ancient Greece were 

 habitually addicted to practices that the lowest of 

 modern prize-fighters would scorn to imitate, this is 

 no excuse for teaching boys to admire them. Bill 

 Sykes is presented by Dickens to his readers as a 

 repulsive vulgar brute. Achilles is presented by 

 Homer as a hero with supernatural endowments and 

 semi-divine pedigree, and all his brutalities, including 

 the disgusting treatment of the dead body of Hector, 

 are so effectively blazoned forth in poetic glamour and 

 admiration as to utterly pervert the natural moral 

 sense of the majority of the students of the Iliad — so 

 much so that they will probably denounce as rank 

 sacrilege my present common-sense view of the true 

 character of the son of Thetis, the beloved of the gods. 

 I freely admit that the teaching of physical science 

 by rote, the mere grinding of mathematical conun- 

 drums ; training young men to formulate instead of 

 exercising their reasoning faculties, and, still worse, 

 leading them to believe that such mechanical 

 formulating actually is reasoning, deserve all the 

 condemnation they have received. Properly taught 

 science presents to the young mind the sublimest of 

 poetry, and carried upwards, as it should be, from 

 physical to social and moral science, it truly and 

 soundly awakens the sublimest attainable conscious- 

 ness of our own humanity, and our relations to the 

 divine harmonies of the universe. 



