1 86 Thomas Henry Huxley 



that there were two propositions involved in the 

 ' ' literary ' ' view of culture. The first was that a ' ' crit- 

 icism of life " was the essence of culture ; the second, 

 that literature contained the materials which sufficed 

 for the construction of such a criticism. With the 

 first proposition he had no dispute, taking the view 

 that culture was something quite different from learn- 

 ing or technical skill. " It implies the possession of 

 an ideal, and the habit of critically estimating the 

 value of things by comparison with a theoretic stand- 

 ard. Perfect culture should supply a complete theory 

 of life, based upon a clear knowledge alike of its possi- 

 bilities and its limitations." Against the second 

 proposition he urged in the first place that it was self- 

 evident that after having learned all that Greek, Ro- 

 man, and Eastern antiquity have thought and said, 

 and all that modern literature has to tell us, it was still 

 necessary to have a deeper foundation for criticism of 

 life. An acquaintance wdth what physical science had 

 done, particularly in later years, was as necessary to 

 criticism of life as any of the literary materials. Next, 

 following the biological habit of examining anything 

 by studying its development, he shewed how the con- 

 nection between "culture" and study of classical 

 literature had come into existence. For many cent- 

 uries Latin grammar, with logic and rhetoric, studied 

 through Latin, were the fundamentals of education. 

 A liberal education was possible only through study of 

 the language in which all or nearly all the materials 

 for it were written. With the changes produced by the 

 Renascence there came a battle between Latin and 

 Greek, and Greek came to be part of a liberal educa- 

 tion. Later on, there came a similar battle between 

 the classical and modern languages, and now the 



