270 Darwinism and Other Essays. 



Hellenists and Latinists, not, perhaps, scholars 

 like Erasmus and Scaliger, for we no longer need 

 the same sort of work that was needed once, and 

 Donaldson's notion that learned works should still 

 be written in Latin may safely be pronounced a 

 chimera ; but we should have men among us 

 capable of reading ancient literature with ease 

 and pleasure, men capable of extracting from it 

 an amount of historical and philosophical knowl- 

 edge to which the great scholars of the Renais- 

 sance were utter strangers. The scholarship of 

 the present day is necessarily of a quite different 

 type from that of three centuries ago. It has 

 been reacted upon by physical, political, and his- 

 torical science. Its ideal consists in the thorough 

 knowledge of ancient life, manners, moral ideas, 

 and superstitions, as an essential part of the whole 

 history of mankind. Its representatives are men 

 like Grote, Littre*, and Mommsen. Properly pur- 

 sued, it enlarges our sympathies, shows us the 

 people of bygone times as men like ourselves, 

 alike yet different, actuated by like passions, but 

 guided by different opinions and different con- 

 ceptions. It forbids us to judge of them by the 

 standard of our own age ; it corrects the preju- 

 dices inseparable from ignorance of history ; it 

 gives us lessons in political conduct ; it makes us 



