2 Oy THE RELATION OK 



as is permitted by the narrow standpoint of a single student, 

 a general view of the connection of the several sciences, and of 

 their study. 



It may, indeed, he thought that, at the present day, those 

 relations between the different sciences which have led us to 

 combine them under the name Universitas Litterarum, have 

 become looser than ever. We see scholars and scientific men 

 absorbed in specialities of such vast extent, that the most 

 universal genius cannot hope to master more than a small 

 section of our present range of knowledge. For instance, the 

 philologists of the last three centuries found ample occupation 

 in the study of Greek and Latin ; at best they added to it the 

 knowledge of two or three European languages, acquired for 

 practical purposes. But now comparative philology aims at 

 nothing less than an acquaintance with all the languages of all 

 branches of the human family, in order to deduce from them 

 the laws by which language itself has been formed, and to this 

 gigantic task it has already applied itself with superhuman 

 industry. Even classical philology is no longer restricted to 

 the study of those works which, by their artistic perfection 

 and precision of thought, or because of the importance of their 

 contents, have become models of prose and poetry to all ages. 

 On the contrary, we have learnt, that every lost fragment of 

 an ancient author, every gloss of a pedantic grammarian, every 

 allusion of a Byzantine court-poet, every broken tombstone 

 found in the wilds of Hungary or Spain or Africa, may con- 

 tribute a fresh fact, or fresh evidence, and thus serve to increase 

 our knowledge of the past. And so another group of scholars are 

 busy with the vast scheme of collecting and cataloguing, for the 

 use of their successors, every available relic of classical antiquity. 

 Add to this, in history, the study of original documents, the 

 critical examination of parchments and papei-s accumulated in 

 the archives of states and of towns ; the combination of details 

 scattered up and down in memoirs, in correspondence, and iu 

 biographies ; the deciphering of hieroglyphics and cuneiform in- 

 scriptions; in natural history the more and more comprehensive 

 classification of minerals, plants, and animals, as wellliving aa 



