EDITOR'S TABLE. 



703 



ing on the interpretation of phenomena 

 in lower terms than are suited to their 

 special character. " Materialism " in 

 this sense stands in the way of scien- 

 tific progress, for, while the Newto- 

 nian maxim, '•'•Hypotheses nonfingendce 

 sunt prmter necessitatem " (hypotlieses 

 are not to be framed beyond our actual 

 need for them), is a very valuable one, 

 the whole life of science is bound up 

 in the liberty to frame hypotheses ac- 

 cording to our needs. 



We are perhaps now in a position 

 to understand why materiahsm, in one 

 phase at least, has excited so much sus- 

 picion and aversion. The conservative 

 and the progressive instincts of man- 

 kind are at once against it. Men do 

 not wish to be argued out of their per- 

 ceptions of beauty, or out of their ad- 

 miration for the higher human senti- 

 ments and virtues. But they would be 

 argued out of everything of the kind, 

 if they once consented to the principle 

 that the true expression for any given 

 phenomenon is the lowest that it admits 

 of. " Tell love it is but lust ! " says Sir 

 Walter Raleigh, or whoever was the 

 author of that pessimistic poem, "The 

 Lie," which has sometimes passed un- 

 der Raleigh's name. Such is the in- 

 spiring message wliich the materialism 

 we are now considering sometimes feels 

 called upon to deliver to the world. 

 Sexual attraction is the physical basis 

 of love ; ergo, all love must be mere 

 physical appetite. But the world knows 

 that upon that basis great and glorious 

 things have been built, and. that love 

 in its higher forms bears about as close 

 a resemblance to lust as the perfect 

 flower does to the soil from which it 

 springs, or tlie seed in which it once lay 

 imprisoned. The reasonable request of 

 decent people is that things be left as 

 God or Nature has arranged them ; that 

 what has been raised, by no act of 

 man's, into beauty and honor, should 

 hold its status unassailed by the destruc- 

 tive hands of sophistical levelers. Teach 

 us the truth, they say ; show us the 



unity of Nature ; show us the analo- 

 gies of type and function that proclaim 

 and illustrate that unity ; but do not 

 seek to promote a morbid confluence 

 of all the elements of thought by trying 

 to make us think in the same terms of 

 the most diverse facts. It is in its char- 

 acter of the universal denier that ma- 

 terialism encounters such hostility. It 

 does not want to recognize the accom- 

 plished facts of Nature in any region 

 higher than the lowest. But the facts 

 survive, and will survive, all attempts to 

 deny their existence. Man has come» 

 and man is an intellectual and moral 

 being. This is the great, irreversible 

 fact which gives the lie to all pessimistic 

 theories, and which' renders nugatory 

 all attempts to see nothing in the uni- 

 verse but matter and motion. 



THE CONFLICT OF LANGUAGE-STUDIES. 



That able quarterly, the " Biblio- 

 theca Sacra," contains Jin article in 

 its January issue which, considering the 

 scholarly traditions of this old and high- 

 toned periodical, is significant of whole- 

 some progress. It is a defense of the 

 claims of modern languages as against 

 the ancient in the curriculums of col- 

 lege-study. The paper is entitled "A 

 Plea for a Liberal Education," and is by 

 James King Newton, Professor of the 

 German and French Languages and 

 Literature at Oberlin. For the bene- 

 fit of such of our readers as may be 

 interested in this important question, 

 we present some of the considerations 

 urged by this independent writer. 



The ground taken by Professor New- 

 ton is substantially that which we have 

 maintained throughout in " The Popu- 

 lar Science Monthly." Of course, he 

 will be at once ranked, as we have been, 

 among the enemies of the classics — a 

 proceeding entirely without justifica- 

 tion, lie simply but firmly contends 

 for the educational rights of German 

 and French, as against the arrogant and 

 extravagant pretensions put forward by 



