122 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



EDITOR'S TABLE. 



MENTAL PROGRESS AND CULTVRE. 

 "TTTE have frequently maintained in 



VV these columns that a new type 

 of culture is arising in modern times, 

 which is not only strongly contrasted 

 with the old ideal, but is, in essential 

 respects, superior to it. This superi- 

 ority is an inevitable result of the gen- 

 eral laws of mental development by 

 which successive ages become familiar 

 with new orders of ideas. The prog- 

 ress of science is undoubtedly too much 

 looked upon as having to do with the 

 physical world only, as affecting useful 

 arts, inventions, industrial processes, 

 and the accumulation of wealth, but as 

 leaving all the higher and nobler inter- 

 ests of mankind untouched. This is a 

 narrow and erroneous view — the view 

 of those who really do not know what 

 science is accomplishing, nor how far- 

 reaching and all-pervasive its results 

 are destined to be. For it is one of 

 the transcendent victories of science to 

 have shown that the universe is bound 

 together in all its parts by the most 

 vital connections and a supreme unity, 

 which make it impossible that there 

 should be any great revelation respect- 

 ing its fundamental order that does not 

 throw light through all its departments. 

 It may seem to certain minds a matter 

 of no great moment that the physical 

 and material sciences have come into 

 existence, as they are assumed by such 

 minds to belong to a lower sphere or 

 grade of being, "the mere material," 

 and to leave unaffected the loftier 

 sphere of human nature, represented 

 by the spiritual life. But this partial 

 and partisan view must disappear when 

 it is thoroughly realized that science 

 itself belongs to this higher sphere, and 

 that man is exalted by it through the 

 acquisition of new truth and of grander 

 ideas than he had before science ap- 



peared. The progress of science is a 

 progress of thought, and the new and 

 greater ideas thus acquired are certain 

 to become the new instruments of a 

 new culture. 



This view was pointedly presented 

 by Professor Cooke, of Harvard Col- 

 lege, in his recent book on "Scien- 

 tific Culture," in the following words : 

 " What is it that ennobles literary 

 culture but the great minds which, 

 through this culture, have honored the 

 nations to which they belong ? The 

 culture we have chosen is capable ot 

 even greater things ; not because sci- 

 ence is nobler than art, for both are 

 equally noble — it is the thought, the 

 conception, which ennobles, and I care 

 not whether it be attained through one 

 kind of exercise or another — but we are 

 capable of grander and nobler thoughts 

 than Plato, Cicero, Shakespeare, or 

 Newton, because we live in a later 

 period of the world's history, when 

 through science the world has become 

 richer in great ideas. It is, I repeat, 

 the great thought which ennobles, and 

 it ennobles because it raises to a higher 

 plane that which is immortal in our 

 manhood." 



It is no longer possible to deny that 

 science as the latest is also the highest 

 and most perfect product of the mind 

 of man. We can no more ignore or dis- 

 credit the mental growth of the race 

 than the mental growth of the individ- 

 ual, and in neither case can childhood 

 or youth yield the results of maturity. 

 The literary ideal of culture, which em- 

 bodies itself chiefly in the various arts 

 of expression, was realized early and 

 in the immaturity of human thought. 

 Rude science, of course, also began 

 early, but it did not become a meth- 

 od of cultivating the mind until thou- 

 sands of years had passed. The work 



