14 SCIENCE AND CULTURE. [LECT. 



foundation. Moreover, Latin itself ceased to afford 

 the sole key to knowledge. The student who sought 

 the highest thought of antiquity, found only a second- 

 hand reflection of it in Eoman literature, and turned 

 his face to the full light of the Greeks. And after a 

 battle, not altogether dissimilar to that which is at 

 present being fought over the teaching of physical 

 science, the study of Greek was recognised as an 

 essential element of all higher education. 



Thus the Humanists, as they were called, won the 

 day ; and the great reform which they effected was of 

 incalculable service to mankind. But the Nemesis of 

 all reformers is finality ; and the reformers of educa- 

 tion, like those of religion, fell into the profound, 

 however common, error of mistaking the beginning 

 for the end of the work of reformation. 



The representatives of the Humanists, in the 

 nineteenth century, take their stand upon classical 

 education as the sole avenue to culture, as firmly as if 

 we were still in the age of Kenascence. Yet, surely, 

 the present intellectual relations of the modern and 

 the ancient worlds are profoundly different from 

 those which obtained three centuries ago. Leaving 

 aside the existence of a great and characteristically 

 modern literature, of modern painting, and, especially, 

 of modern music, there is one feature of the present 

 state of the civilised world which separates it more 

 widely from the Kenascence, than the Kenascence was 

 separated from the middle ages. 



This distinctive character of our own times lies in 

 the vast and constantly increasing part which is 



