190 THE IDEALS OF A SCIENCE SCHOOL 



other ages must be interpreted 'with regard to the 

 state of learning at the time. Thus, to take the 

 well-known quotation from Keats : 



" Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all 

 Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know," 



and to make of it the motto of a university to-day 

 would be absurd. Even as an answer to the famous 

 question of Pontius Pilate, " What is truth ? " in 

 the spirit of the pagan classics he worshipped, it 

 was out of date. For had not Plato written over 

 the garden gates of the place destined to give the 

 name Academy to a school of learning, " Let no 

 one enter who is destitute of geometry?" Now 

 nothing is truer than geometry, nor so far removed 

 from the aesthetic emotions. It has been contended 1 

 that this inscription secures for Plato the priority 

 for the discovery that real truth is ascertainable 

 by mortal men, and that his famous Dialogues were 

 satirical commentaries on the systems of education 

 in vogue among the Athenian youth of his day, 

 in which that important discovery had not been 

 grasped. If so, would he were alive still, for what 

 a first-rate champion of science he would be, and 

 what a wealth of illustration for his argument he 

 would find in sciences other than geometry. 



Of another of these great masters, Aristotle, it 

 is of interest to note that Huxley put forward the 

 theory that the text of his works, which blindly 

 dominated intellectual Europe to the time of Galileo, 

 is in reality nothing more than a collection of the 

 notes of his lectures taken down by one of his 

 students. It is impossible otherwise to account 

 for such an amazing juxtaposition of marvellously 



1 William Whewell, " Science and Education," p. 23. W 

 Heinemann, 1917. (Lectures delivered at the Royal Institution of 

 Great Britain, edited by Sir E. Ray Lankester.) 



