4 EMILE BOUTROUX 



cialization, to substitute for culture a mechani- 

 cal training of an entirely different sort? 



These questions suggest themselves today to 

 all reflecting minds and it seems particularly 

 opportune to discuss them here, in this college, 

 which has set before itself the ideal of being 

 at the same time a laboratory of pure science 

 and a school of high culture. 



We must not be surprised to find ourselves 

 confronted by this problem: it does not date 

 from yesterday. Humanity in the course of 

 its history has already, at many recurring in- 

 tervals, passed through crises analogous to the 

 situation we have before our eyes. 



Long ago among the ancient Greeks, the 

 appearance of the Sophists meant a conflict 

 of this kind. Some bold investigators sketched 

 the foundations for a science of nature to be 

 constructed not as before, say in the cosmogonic 

 doctrines, from the standpoint of man, his be- 

 liefs and his desires, but from the standpoint 

 of nature itself. They were called physio- 

 logues. They tried to find out whether the 

 substance of things is one or multiple, changing 

 or immutable, formed of visible elements or of 



