120 GERMAN SCIENCE 
surely, may be, and has been the case, with the pursuit of purely 
literary studies.? 
Of all the distinctions that I dislike, none seems more 
misleading than that of calling literary studies the ‘Humanities ’. 
It leads almost inevitably to the inference that the rest of - ¥ 
knowledge consists of inhumanities. I would not say a word 
of disrespect for the so-called humanities, for I have no dis- 
respectful thought concerning them—as I conceive they should 
be, and as they really are apart from pedants. The proper 
study of mankind may be man; and human history, the 
human wisdom of our forefathers, human piety and human 
poetry, the study of the human mind, will always have their 
assured place. But outside man stands the rest of Nature, 
the Universe. The exploration of that, the unravelling of all 
the phenomena of the Heavens and the Earth, the revelation 
of natural law that.was before man was, that will remain when 
man may well have ceased to be—that surely is a study & 
which should not be belittled by any exclusive term. That 
surely is not a study which, properly conceived and properly 
pursued, will make a man or a people arrogant, mechanical, 
unimaginative or impious. The time I think may come when 
everyone who now rightly thinks himself in darkness if he has 
not some love or knowledge of the humanities, will be not any 
less ashamed to be heedless or ignorant of the natural sciences, 
which, if it is desired to denote them by a single word, might, 
I think, without any impropriety be called the divinities. 
The danger of science undoubtedly lies in the rich material 
fruits that it inevitably sheds in its luxuriant growth. These 
are a temptation to the carnal mind, and I would say as soon 
as anyone, Woe be to the man or to the nation that sets its 
heart on these alone! 
Such a danger may be said to exist in modern Germany, 
*It cannot be too emphatically stated that the school discipline of 
Germany was not based on scientific studies. (January 1921.) 
