96 Edward Livingston Youmans. 



to the higher and more generous inculcations of Christian- 

 ity, which lays upon human nature its broad and eternal 

 requirement, "to do good." From this authoritative moral 

 demand science cannot be exempted. The power it confers 

 is to be held and used as power is exercised by God himself, 

 for purposes of universal blessing. . . . 



We place a high estimate upon the advantages which 

 society may reap from a better acquaintance with material 

 phenomena, for life is a stern realm of cause and effect, fact 

 and law. As such we would deal with it in education, giv- 

 ing prominence to those forms of knowledge which will 

 work the largest practical alleviations and most substantial 

 improvement throughout the community. It is wisely de- 

 signed that those studies which may become in the highest 

 degree useful are also first in intellectual interest. ... So 

 far from being unfriendly to the imagination, as is some- 

 times intimated, science is its noblest precursor and ally. 

 Can that be unfavourable to this faculty which infinitely 

 multiplies its materials and boundlessly multiplies its scope ? 

 In unsealing the mysteries of being in turning the com- 

 monest spot into a museum of wonders who can doubt 

 that science has opened a new and splendid career for the 

 play of the diviner faculties, and that its pursuit affords the 

 most exhilarating as well as the healthiest and purest of 

 intellectual enjoyments? 



Of the method of science he says : 



It educates the attention by establishing habits of ac- 

 curate observation, strengthens the judgment, teaches the 

 supremacy of facts, cultivates order in their classification, 

 and develops the reason through the establishment of gen- 

 eral principles. It is claimed, as an advantage of mathe- 

 matics, that it deals with certainties, and, raising the mind 

 above the confusions and insecurities of imperfect knowl- 

 edge, habituates it to the demand of absolute truth. That 



