200 THE IDEALS OF A SCIENCE SCHOOL 



world. It was in no sense the dead language that 

 it is to-day, but the key to learned literature, not only 

 of the past, but also of the present. When it became 

 necessary for a gentleman to know how to write, it 

 was Latin that he wrote, not his mother tongue. 

 The Faculty of Arts has never yet, though the 

 necessity has long since ceased to exist, dissociated 

 itself from its original preoccupation with the teaching 

 of dead languages, as a, then, necessary preliminary 

 to any kind of learning and culture. Original creative 

 work in painting, sculpture, architecture, the drama, 

 music and so on have hitherto been pursued outside 

 the university, and this applies also to by far the 

 greater and most valuable part of poetry, and 

 literature generally. 



Even theology has been more progressive. After 

 science had shown the value of the patient, unbiassed 

 examination of data, pursued solely with the desire 

 to elicit the truth, the traditional records, upon which 

 theology is based, became the subject of critical 

 examination, especially in Germany. Parker, writ- 

 ing in 1867, says : " Much of our embarrassment in 

 Biblical Criticism is due to our ignorance of Hebrew 

 and German. For Latin, as a common language, 

 has died out, and German has now for a long time 

 been the tongue in which all questions relating to 

 antiquity are discussed with the most research and 

 learning." But the popular attitude to such inquiries 

 apparently is still similar to that which unbiassed 

 inquiries in science evoked in the Middle Ages, and 

 many times during the war have I read letters in the 

 press tracing the decline of the moral forces in 

 Germany to her eminence in theological studies, 

 with never a protest from our own learned theo- 

 logians against such bigotry. 



But if to the old Faculties of Arts and Theology 

 the ideals of science are not without application, the 



