FAEMEKS' INSTITUTES. 21» 



certainties of Avealth as a practical chemist for the external poverty and rich 

 internal wealth of a life devoted to the discovery of truths of science. See 

 Linuteus, who seemed to care for nothing but his favorite science. See any- 

 where in the biography of scientific men a devotion to science as strong as ever 

 bound a miser or inspired a poet. The same kind of enthusiasm, which in one 

 place I have seen kindled by Greek literature, I have seen in another bestowed 

 upon anatomy, or zoology, or geology, or botany, or chemistry. It doesn't 

 hurt these studies that they are useful. We are not quite to the day, but we are 

 approaching it, when men will not apologize for being useful. And now the 

 whole division between useful and useless needs revision. If music cultivates 

 the taste, bestows a refined pleasure, it is in its high way as useful as that which 

 adds an increase of flavor to the peach or grape, for the less refined plea-urc of 

 the tongue. If Greek seems remote from our modern needs, it is only our 

 ignorance of its relations thereto. I find, indeed, on turning to a work entitled 

 ''Classical Study, its value illustrated by extracts from the writii. gs of emi- 

 nent scholars," edited by Dr. Taylor of Philip Academy, that no argument for 

 the study of Greek and Latin is oftener urged than their usefulness. Yet the 

 book was purposely made to combat the aggressions of a scientific upon the 

 classical courses of study. In my library there stands, peacefully unconscious 

 of inner repulsion, a book compiled by Mr. Youmans, entitled "Tiie Culture 

 Demanded by Modern Life.'' Its purpose is to recommend the study of 

 science, and yet its pages are full of arguments drawn from the dignity of 

 these objects of study, the trac discipline the study affords, the deep pleasure it 

 bestows. No one can say abstractly whether Greek or chemistry will be of the 

 most use to a young man Just entering upon a course of study, nor is there any 

 reason why those who are in one. course should look down in the least upon 

 those in any other. Nor does one course any more than another overlook the 

 true disciplinary ends of study. 



The motives that operate to keep a person to a course of study are seldom 

 simple and one. They are oftener mixed and of variable strength. The expec- 

 tation of greater power tlirough the two endowments of study, tiiat is, through 

 mental discipline, and through knowledge, is one strong clement in probably 

 the larger part of a body of students, and it is as honorable in the chemical 

 laboratory, or the agricultural school, as it is in him Avho takes a literary and 

 classical course that he may be the better speaker or writer. One studies to be 

 a more successful practitioner, another to be a better engineer or farmer; where 

 is the odds as regards the dignity of the motive? Then there is the sense of the 

 dignity of our nature, and its obligation to know, and to develop within itself 

 beauty and power. There is the native curiosity of man out of wliich comes 

 philosophy and science, and which craves satisfaction in the pursuit of truth, as 

 much as taste and imagination seek it in poems and marble. There is the 

 desire to be useful, to forward society in its comforts, in the dignity of its 

 employments, in its higher welfare. All these impulses find a fitting ]n'epara- 

 tion in different lines of study, with some in classical studies, in a larger num- 

 ber in a knowledge of spoken languages and of the sciences. The proper 

 ground it seems to me was taken by the eminent founder of Cornell University 

 in his desire to spread his table witli the elements of all knowledge, and then to 

 count none of them common or unclean. There is no study which cannot be 

 narrowing if studied in a narrow spirit, none without such relationships as make 

 it ennobling. To the lean mind the highest truths of theology remain thin. Like 

 the lean kine of the Nile, the mere knowing faculties may feed upon the fat 



