388 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



form of industry, commerce, and mechanical appliances, 

 now forms a large and absorbing region of human work 

 and interests : as it were a new Eeality. 



As the stability and progress of civilised society 

 depend to a very large extent on providing work for 

 willing hands and active brains, these modern regions 

 of thought and life which were unknown three hundred 

 years ago, viz., the field of scientific research and the field 

 of industrial and technical application, have absorbed 

 an increasing proportion of workers, compared with 

 whose occupations those of earlier times are gradually 

 becoming — at least in highly-civilised countries — of 

 much less interest, though certainly not of less import- 

 ance. The former employments, theoretical and prac- 

 tical, have for intelligent minds the further advantage 

 that in both success depends upon the use of definite 

 methods which can be taught and learned, and through 

 which large numbers of persons can become efficient 

 workers, who without this training would hold very 

 inferior positions. Whereas in former times such co- 

 operation was almost entirely limited to the military 

 profession, we have now, besides the military, a scientific 

 and an industrial army, the rank and file of which 

 becomes every day more numerous and more highly 

 trained. All this is a creation of the modern scientific 

 spirit. To this must be added a further character- 

 istic feature in modern civilisation pointed out in an 

 earlier chapter. It may be shortly described as the 

 ProiiLmof separation of Education and Instruction. As shown 

 eXaition. at length in the first volume of this History,^ this 



^ See supra, vol. i, p. 2.58 sqq., u. 



