150 SCIENCE AND CULTURE vi 



In fact, the most elementary acquaintance with 

 the results of scientific investigation shows us 

 that they offer a broad and striking contradiction 

 to the opinion so implicitly credited and taught in 

 the middle ages. 



The notions of the beginning and the end of 

 the world entertained by our forefathers are 110 

 longer credible. It is very certain that the earth 

 is not the chief body in the material universe, 

 and that the world is ' not subordinated to man's 

 use. It is even more certain that nature is the 

 expression of a definite order with which nothing 

 interferes, and that the chief business of mankind 

 is to learn that order and govern themselves 

 accordingly. Moreover this scientific "criticism 

 of life" presents itself to us with different 

 credentials from any other. It appeals not to 

 authority, nor to what anybody may have thought 

 or said, but to nature. It admits that all our 

 interpretations of natural fact are more or less 

 imperfect and symbolic, and bids the learner seek 

 for truth not among words but among things. It 

 warns us that the assertion which outstrips 

 evidence is not only a blunder but a crime. 



The purely classical education advocated by 

 the representatives of the Humanists in our day, 

 gives no inkling of all this. A man may be a 

 better scholar than Erasmus, and know no more 

 of the chief causes of the present intellectual 

 fermentation than Erasmus did. Scholarly and 



