174 SELECTED ESS A YS FROM LA Y SERMONS 



and to all the Romance languages; and German, because 

 it is the key to almost all the remainder of English, and 

 helps you to understand a race from whom most of us have 

 sprung, and who have a character and a literature of a 

 fateful force in the history of the world, such as probably 

 has been allotted to those of no other people, except the 

 Jews, the Greeks, and ourselves. Beyond these, the essen- 

 tial and the eminently desirable elements of all education, 

 let each man take up his special line — the historian devote 

 himself to his history, the man of science to his science, the 

 man of letters to his culture of that kind, and the artist to 

 his special pursuit. 



Bacon has prefaced some of his works with no more than 

 this: Franciscus Bacon sic cogitavit; let ''sic cogitavi" be 

 the epilogue to what I have ventured to address to you to- 

 night. 



