Edward Livingston Youmans. 



Yet it is by denying this, and insisting that science consists 

 in collecting stones, labelling plants, and dabbling in chem- 

 ical messes, that the adherents of tradition strive to ren- 

 der it obnoxious to popular prejudice. In defending the 

 policy of the Great English Schools which contemptuously 

 ignore almost the whole body of modern knowledge, the 

 able Head-master of Rugby puts the case on the explicit 

 ground that science deals only with the lower utilities, 

 while classical studies carry us up to the sphere of life and 

 man ; that science only instructs, while they humanize. But 

 we have seen that such a view is indefensible. Science be- 

 ing the most perfect form of thought, and man its proper 

 subject, the sharply defined question is, whether he is to be 

 studied by the lower or the higher method. Is the most 

 thorough acquaintance with humanity to be gained by cut- 

 ting the student off from the life of his own age, and set- 

 ting him to tunnel through dead languages, to get such 

 imperfect and distorted glimpses as he may of man and so- 

 ciety in their antiquated forms; or by equipping him with 

 the best resources of modern thought, and putting him to 

 the direct and systematic study of men and society as they 

 present themselves to observation and experience ? In all 

 other departments it is held desirable, as far as possible, to 

 place directly before the student his materials of inquiry : 

 why abandon the principle in the case of its highest appli- 

 cation ? 



Our question thus assujnes another aspect : for the best 

 discipline of the human mind, shall we make use of those 

 higher forms and completer methods of knowledge which 

 constitute the science of the present age, or shall we use 

 the lower and looser knowledge and cruder methods of 

 the past ? 



the prolongation of an action from Science upon Philosophy that had been 

 going on for a considerable time before." 



