Science and Art 119 



but from the point of view of literature. I say the thing 

 professes to be literary education that is not a literary edu- 

 cation at all. It was not literature at all that was taught, 

 but science in a very bad form. It is quite obvious that 

 grammar is science and not literature. The analysis of a 5 

 text by the help of the rules of grammar is just as much 

 a scientific operation as the analysis of a chemical com- 

 pound by the help of the rules of chemical analysis. There 

 is nothing that appeals to the aesthetic faculty in that 

 operation; and I ask multitudes of men of my own age, 10 

 who went through this process, whether they ever had a 

 conception of art or literature until they obtained it for 

 themselves after leaving school? Then you may say, "If 

 that is so, if the education was scientific, why cannot you 

 be satisfied with it?" I say, because although it is a 15 

 scientific training, it is of the most inadequate and inap- 

 propriate kind. If there is any good at all in scientific 

 education it is that men should be trained, as I said before, 

 to know things for themselves at first hand, and that 

 they should understand every step of the reason of that 20 

 which they do. 



I desire to speak with the utmost respect of that science 

 philology of which grammar is a part and parcel; yet 

 everybody knows that grammar, as it is usually learned at 

 school, affords no scientific training. It is taught just as 25 

 you would teach the rules of chess or draughts. On the 

 other hand, if I am to understand by a literary education 

 the study of the literatures of either ancient or modern 

 nations but especially those of antiquity, and especially 

 that of ancient Greece; if this literature is studied, not 30 

 merely from the point of view of philological science, and 

 its practical application to the interpretation of texts, but 

 as an exemplification of and commentary upon the prin- 

 ciples of art ; if you look upon the literature of a people as 



