72 HUXLEY MEMORIAL LECTURES 



the minds of the educated out of their narrow sur- 

 roundings into the broad spaces of Greek 

 thought. It keeps before us the imperishable 

 models of ancient beauty, the poems of Homer 

 and Virgil, the dramas of Euripides, the dialogues 

 of Plato, the lives of Plutarch, the statues of 

 Phidias and Praxiteles. If we were to forget or 

 to neglect these precious legacies of the past, we 

 should fall many degrees in civilization. Nor 

 less is the claim upon us of modern literature and 

 art in all their phases. But yet this culture leaves 

 lacunae. 



By a scientific education men usually mean a 

 training in what is in this country regarded as in 



_. nT -^ - rr^ in i -^^ 



a special degree science, the natural knowledge 

 which begins with mathematics and ends with 

 biology, the study of the visible world, of nature 

 animate and inanimate. This training also is in 

 its way admirable ; it would be in me an imperti- 

 nence to attempt to write its panegyric. But has 

 it no tendency to drift into specialism, a narrow- 

 ing of the mind to a single small field of study 

 and observation? and is it free from the danger 

 of disposing those who too exclusively pursue it 

 towards materialism, and blindness to the higher 

 and more human side of life? The space left 

 between literary education on one side and scien- 

 tific education on the other, is in England very 

 imperfectly occupied. Human science is among 

 us the Cinderella, whose sisters are made much 

 of, while she has to take what they do not care for. 



