J 



150 SCIENCE AND CULTURE vi 



In fact, the most elementary acquaintance with 

 the results of scientific investigation shows us 

 that they offer a broad and striking contradiction 

 to the opinion so implicitly credited and taught in 

 the middle ages. 



The notions of the beginning and the end of 



the world entertained by our forefathers are no 



longer credible. It is very certain that the earth 



is not the chief body in the material universe, 



and that the world is not subordinated to man's 



use. (li is even more certain that nature is the 



expression of a definite order with which nothing 



interferes, and that the chief business of mankind 



is to learn that order and govern themselves 



accordingly. Moreover this scientific "criticism 



of life" presents itself to us with different 



credentials from any other. It appeals not to 



\ authority, nor to what anybody may have thought 



\ or said, but to nature. It admits that all our 



interpretations of natural fact are more or less 



i imperfect and symbolic, and bids the learner seek 



Ifor truth not among words but among things. 3 It 



warns us that the assertion which outstrips 



evidence is not only a blunder but a crime. 



The purely classical education advocated by 

 the representatives of the Humanists in our day, 

 gives no 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 



