Aa a, 
- 1900-1901.] Nature Study. 247 
one field, they begin to plough another; and as if the day were 
not enough, I have seen them working by moonlight,” and so 
on. And the great philosopher of Gottingen adds, “This is 
not the language of stupidity. On the contrary, if it were 
presented to us in Greek verse, we should admire in Latin 
; commentaries the fineness with which it derides the perversity 
of the white men, of whom so many, in their haste to get 
forward, lose all remembrance of their goal.” 
It is the Hindoo habit to give some time every day to 
tranquillity and meditation; and it was Aristotle who said, 
_“ All work to which men submit is for the purpose of having 
Peisure” ; and it seems to me that a man can have no greater 
material blessing than leisure and the power to use it well. 
_ From the invention of machines and the use of steam power 
every man in this country may be said to have the power of 
five or six men placed at his disposal, yet labour for the 
“Majority of men is not less incessant. One should hope that 
‘in the future labour will become less imperious, and that the 
- concomitant leisure will make for human culture. If we take 
the power of using leisure well as the measure of culture, we 
may have grave doubts that we are making much progress in 
hat direction. Russell Lowell once expressed badly—which 
he did not often do—a thought at bottom right: he said, “A 
‘university is a place where nothing useful is taught.” That 
“may have a painful ring of truth about it to us old students, 
‘In a sense that was not intended. What Lowell intended to 
“convey was, that a university was a place for obtaining a liberal 
education, and a liberal education is not an education in bread- 
and-butter making; it is essentially an education in disinter- 
estedness. That seems to be the ideal towards which the 
higher education should continually approach: it is to be 
feared that it is not doing so at present. Culture for its 
own sake is what we need, and the method of nature study 
should be for many a convenient path towards it. 
_ Much more might be said about nature study as culture. 
Man is the terminal link of a long chain of organic forms. 
‘Since these plane-tree leaves of which I have already spoken 
ew in Mull, the mammalian brain has increased enormously 
size. Will this brain development go on? Will existing 
develop into higher forms to whom we shall appear like 
