RATIONALISM AND SCIENCE 71 



II. 



The moral is sufficiently obvious. It is of the ) ' 

 utmost necessity for the well-being and progress 

 of society that the sciences which have man for 

 their subject-matter should be earnestly pursued; 

 that they should be organized at our Universities, 

 that research in them should be made one of the 

 great ends of all higher education, that we should 

 set aside every weight and hindrance which may 

 prevent us from running this course with all the 

 energy which we possess. 



Theoretically, perhaps, almost any thoughtful 

 person would concede this principle. Yet when 

 we come to look at education as it is, we see that 

 the practical means to this end are by no means 

 so generally conceded. We in England are in 

 this matter behind the nations of the Continent, 

 especially France and Germany. With us educa- 

 tion is still regarded as necessarily either literary 

 or scientific. By a literary education we mean an 

 acquaintance with certain languages an3 tHe 

 books written in them, a training whereby a man 

 acquires a good and correct stylejnjwriting. and 

 a knowledge of the way in which nature and the 

 great problems of life have been regarded, more 

 especially by the Greeks and Romans. In its 

 own way this training is admirable; I should be 

 one of the last to speak slightingly of it. For 

 four hundred years it has served to maintain a 

 high standard of literature and culture. It takes 



