TYNDALDS RELATION TO POPULAR SCIENCE. 735 



able to share the experience and knowledge of other individuals of his 

 time, as also those of past generations; without which each man 

 would, like the lower animals, be limited to his instinct and to his own 

 particular experience. That therefore the improvement of language 

 was formerly the first and most necessary work of a growing race, and 

 that the most refined perfection of its comprehension and its use is, 

 and must ever be, the primary problem in the education of each indi- 

 vidual, is undoubted. The culture of modern European nations has a 

 peculiarly intimate connection with the study of the remains of an- 

 tiquity ; and, thereby, directly with the study of language. With the 

 latter study was associated that of the forms of thought, which are 

 coined in speech ; logic and grammar, that is, according to the origi- 

 nal meaning of the words, the art of speaking and the art of writing, 

 both taken in the highest sense, have therefore been hitherto the nat- 

 ural hinge-points of mental education. 



But while language is the means of handing down and preserving 

 truth once recognized, we must not forget that its study teaches 

 nothing as to how fresh truth is to be found, Similarly, logic shows 

 how, from the proposition which forms the major of a syllogism, con- 

 clusions are to be drawn ; but it can tell us nothing as to whence this 

 proposition has come. He who will convince himself of its independent 

 truth must, on the other hand, begin with knowledge of the individual 

 cases which fall under the law, and which afterward, if this have been 

 established, may doubtless also be accepted as deductions from the 

 law. But only where a knowledge of the law is one which has been 

 communicated by others, does it actually take precedence of knowl- 

 edge of the deductions, and, in such a case, the treatises of the old 

 formal logic assume their undeniable practical importance. 



Thus all these studies do not themselves lead us to the proper 

 source of knowledge — do not bring us face to face with the reality 

 which we seek to know. There is therefore, undoubtedly, a danger in 

 communicating to each one, by preference, a knowledge the source of 

 which he has not personally contemplated. Comparative mythology 

 and the criticism of the metaphysical systems can tell a great deal 

 of how figurative word-expression has in time been exalted to the 

 importance of real knowledge, and even become valued as ultimate 

 wisdom. 



While fully recognizing, then, the significance (not to be sufficiently 

 appreciated) of the finely-elaborated art of communicating the ac- 

 quired knowledge of others, and receiving in return such communica- 

 tions from others, in regard to the mental improvement of our race ; 

 while also recognizing the importance attaching to the contents of the 

 classical writings, for the cultivation of the moral and aesthetic senti- 

 ments, for the development of an intimate knowledge of human feel- 

 ings, conceptions, and conditions of culture ; we must yet hold that an 

 important element is wanting from the exclusively literary-logical 



