SCIENCE VERSUS THE CLASSICS. 675 



these are objects of instruction which are incomparably more adapted 

 to the young student for exercises in thinking, while having the addi- 

 tional advantage of appealing directly to the senses. The most deli- 

 cate test of correct thinking is furnished by the experiment. The most 

 natural way to make the intellect independent is through the occupation 

 with the exact sciences, physics and chemistry, with elementary experi- 

 ments forming a transition from play to the seriousness of reality ; 

 but not through translations of the speeches, long since deprived of all 

 vital interest, of Greek or Roman lawyers, or of the phraseology of 

 dead languages with their intricate syntax and superfluous particles. 



"J seize every opportunity to censure this unnatural condition, and 

 I blame it in this connection because it injures health. ... I regret 

 vividly that precisely in Germany, the home of physiology, the coun- 

 try in which it is honored the most, where the greatest means are 

 placed at its disposal and laboratories resembling palaces are built for 

 it, that here where the number of its learned adherents is the largest, 

 the science is least known among the people at large. . . . Every edu- 

 cated person has been compelled in his youth to learn a lot of details 

 — for instance, of Greek mythology, the history of the Church, of the 

 Old and New Testaments, grammar, etc. — which in later years never 

 again entered into the circle of his ideas, and only burdened his mem- 

 ory without the least advantage for his intellectual development, and 

 his mental and moral education. As to the inner condition of his 

 own body, the connection of the heart's beating with the breathing 

 process, of the process of alimentation with the production of animal 

 heat, and as to what is meant by muscles, nerves, ganglia, and how 

 the gradual transformation of the tissues goes on in youth and old 

 age — that is not taught, though there would be time enough for it, if 

 less attention was paid to unnecessary matters." 



If we contrast with these remarks of a scholar and scientist, who 

 evidently knows whereof he speaks, the utterances of a lawyer like Lord 

 Coleridge, or of a dealer in aesthetics like Mr. Matthew Arnold, we are 

 struck with the absolute pertinence of the former, and the thin gener- 

 ality of the latter. " Sweetness and light " come with health, physical 

 and mental ; logical acumen comes from an accurate knowledge of 

 things brought to the test of rigid experiment. Felicity of expression, 

 or perfect harmony between the thought and its outward dress, is 

 not limited to Greek and Latin writers, but is as general as literature 

 itself. And if the progress from general knowledge of disconnected 

 events to special knowledge of phenomena connected by invisible 

 and yet omnipresent law everywhere marks the advance of human 

 thought, why, then, should the intelligent study of the latter be a 

 less efiicient guide to " sweetness and light," or to the " highest edu- 

 cation," than the study of literatures that dealt for the most part 

 with problems which possess only slight interest, or none at all, for 

 the best thinkers of to-day ? 



