16 SCIENCE AND CULTURE. [LECT. 



inkling of all this. A man may be a better scholar 

 than Erasmus, and know no more of the chief causes 

 of the present intellectual fermentation than Erasmus 

 did. Scholarly and pious persons, worthy of all 

 respect, favour us with allocutions upon the sadness 

 of the antagonism of science to their mediaeval way 

 of thinking, which betray an ignorance of the first 

 principles of scientific investigation, an incapacity for 

 understanding what a man of science means by 

 veracity, and an unconsciousness of the weight of 

 established scientific truths, which is almost comical. 



There is no great force in the tu quoque argument, 

 or else the advocates of scientific education might 

 fairly enough retort upon the modern Humanists that 

 they may be learned specialists, but that they possess 

 no such sound foundation for a criticism of life as 

 deserves the name of culture. And, indeed, if we 

 were disposed to be cruel, we might urge that the 

 Humanists have brought this reproach upon them- 

 selves, not because they are too full of the spirit of 

 the ancient Greek, but because they lack it. 



The period of the Kenascence is commonly called 

 that of the " Kevival of Letters," as if the influences 

 then brought to bear upon the mind of Western Europe 

 had been wholly exhausted in the field of literature. 

 I think it is very commonly forgotten that the revival 

 of science, effected by the same agency, although less 

 conspicuous, was not less momentous. 



In fact, the few and scattered students of nature 

 of that day picked up the clue to her secrets exactly 

 as it fell from the hands of the Greeks a thousand 



