752 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Michael Angelo, Mozart, and the rest of the masters never needed 

 them and would have wasted their time in studying them. 



When educational institutions are being founded and a cur- 

 riculum organized, men will and must take the best material to be 

 had. With such data the educational scheme of the old univer- 

 sities was organized and it became assimilated with the religious 

 institutions already present, and out of them grew a philosophy 

 of education which was theological at its base. Man was a fallen 

 being ; he had originally been perfect and upright. He was not 

 an integral part of the universe and necessarily related to it, but 

 was a new creation, endowed in a supernatural way, but who had, 

 unfortunately for him, lost a part of his original patrimony. If 

 he was to better his condition his efforts must be directed to 

 making himself like the best models of men who had lived, 

 which could be done by becoming acquainted with their works 

 and imitating them as closely as possible. The ideal man was 

 the man of the past, and nothing of great importance to charac- 

 ter was to be learned by giving attention to things not directly 

 related to humanity. It might be convenient to know something 

 of other matters, but it was not essential to the attainment of 

 character or needed for the ideally perfect man. The so-called 

 humanities consisted of a series of studies into the things that 

 had interested the men of the past, to the end that men might 

 become great and learned and wise and eloquent and good. In 

 that way men could, in a degree, recover their lost estate while in 

 this life, and be fully redeemed in the life to come. 



The educational institutions became strong allies of the reli- 

 gious institutions, but the former were subservient to the latter. 

 Any man who attempted to teach differently or who taught mat- 

 ters that were plainly at variance with such principles, though 

 only by implication, met instant hostility from both, and the his- 

 tory of the times is the history of martyrdom. 



Vested interests are essential to institutions of any sort and 

 serve as their protectors. Although we can not see how it could 

 be otherwise, yet because of it hundreds of thousands of the 

 choicest of the race have been tortured and have perished in dun- 

 geons and in fire. 



About two hundred years ago Newton published his Prin- 

 cipia. It dealt with physical forces and their laws. It was what 

 we would call to-day a treatise on mechanics. He discovered and 

 formulated the laws, and, after no great contentions, they were 

 quite generally adopted and taught as a branch of learning 

 which it was useful to know. As it was mathematical in its 

 character, it was of a sort that compels assent by the one who 

 understands it ; but it was adopted for what it then appeared to 

 be, not for what was necessarily implied in its acceptance. The 



