45O Edward Livingston Youmans. 



had a coeval destiny ; have suffered together, and grown 

 together. Both break from prescription and throw them- 

 selves upon Nature, and the watchword of both is Progress, 

 which consists not in rejecting the past, but in subordinat- 

 ing and outgrowing it, in assimilating and reorganizing its 

 truth, and leaving behind its obsolete forms. In the last 

 century we threw off the trammels of the repressive sys- 

 tem, and entered upon the experiment of Free Institutions ; 

 but it avails little to shift the external forms if the old ideas 

 are not replaced by new growths of thought and feeling. 

 Our system of Popular Education is the first great construc- 

 tive measure of National progress, and this has yet to be 

 moulded to its purposes through a system of higher institu- 

 tions, organized into harmony with the genius of American 

 circumstances and the great requirements of the period. 



In the preceding pages I have quoted Mr. J. S. Mill's 

 able presentation of the claims of Scientific Studies; but 

 lest I be accused of partiality in the use of his authority, 

 it is proper to add that in the same address he makes also 

 a strong argument for the Classics. It is not pertinent 

 here to criticise this branch of his argument, as the claims 

 of the classics are put less on the usual ground of " disci- 

 pline" than on certain high utilities of scholarship. But 

 while, as the reader has seen, Mr. Mill urges the impor- 

 tance of Scientific Studies for all, an examination of his 

 argument for the Classics will show that it is applicable 

 only to those who, like himself, are professional scholars, 

 and devote their lives to Philological, Historical, or Critical 

 Studies. 



