Apbil 1, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



485 



Latin classics, is becoming obsolete and the 

 demand is that modern language training 

 shall replace the study of Greek and Latin 

 because of the greater usefulness of mod- 

 ern languages in the practical business of 

 life. Regarded simply as mental discipline 

 the exchange of modem language study for 

 the ancient tongues may have entailed no 

 serious loss, and possibly, from the stand- 

 point of material usefulness, the exchange 

 may have even been attended with a cer- 

 tain degree of gain, but what has been lost 

 is the uplifting effect of the Greek ideal, 

 the spiritualizing power with which the 

 activities of life became invested by con- 

 tact with Greek thought and culture. 



Ih his portrayal of the processes of in- 

 tellectual growth of his young hero, "Walter 

 Pater says of Marius the Epicurean : 



He was acquiring what ia the chief function of 

 all higher education to impart, namely, of so 

 relieving the ideal or poetic traits, the elements 

 of distinction in our everyday life — of so exclu- 

 sively living in them — that the unadorned re- 

 mainder of it, the mere drift and debris of our 

 days, comes to be as though it were not. ... If 

 our modern education in its better efforts really 

 conveys to any of us that kind of idealizing power 

 it does so (though dealing mainly, as its pro- 

 fessed instruments, with the most select and ideal 

 remains of ancient literature) oftenest by truant 

 reading. 



We have here, I think, the admission by 

 one who was himself one of the illuminati 

 of classic learning that while the "most 

 select and ideal remains of ancient litera- 

 ture" are the professed instruments by 

 which the idealizing power is directly 

 awakened in the human intellect, yet the 

 divine spark of inspiration is oftenest 

 caught from "truant reading." But why 

 necessarily or exclusively from reading of 

 any sort in the literal sense? Is there not 

 in the world about us, in the study of the 

 material universe of which we are a part, 

 the contact with which involves not only 

 our struggle for existence but our effort 



to solve the riddle of life, the stuff from 

 which all books, all literatures are de- 

 rived? Is it not from these sources that 

 the poets, the sages, the inspired ones of all 

 times have heard the divine message and 

 transmitted it in immortal terms to hu- 

 manity ? 



Those leaders of education who have 

 yielded a willing ear to the general de- 

 mand for utilitarianism as the dominating 

 principle in our educational system, have 

 justified their position by a narrow inter- 

 pretation of Herbert Spencer's epoch-ma- 

 king question of "What knowledge is of 

 most worth?" 



The deduction that only the knowledge 

 which has any worth at all is that kind 

 which may be converted to material use is 

 an injustice to the intellectual breadth of 

 the great philosopher which is not war- 

 ranted by his own statement of his case. 

 In his contention as to the superiority of 

 scientific study over other means of edu- 

 cation he says : 



The discipline of science is superior to that of 

 ordinary education because of the religious culture 

 that it gives. So far from science being irreligious, 

 as many think, it is the neglect of science that is 

 irreligious. Science is religious inasmuch as it 

 generates a profound respect for and an implicit 

 faith in those uniform laws which underlie all 

 things. By accumulated experiences a man of 

 science acquires a thorough belief in the un- 

 changing relations of phenomena, in the invariable 

 connection of cause and consequence, in the neces- 

 sity of good or evil results. He sees that the laws 

 to which we must submit are not only inexorable 

 but beneficent. He sees that in virtue of these 

 laws, the process of things is ever toward a 

 greater perfection and a higher happiness. Science 

 alone can give us true conceptions of ourselves 

 and our relation to the mysteries of existence. 

 Only the sincere man of science — and by this title 

 we do not mean the mere calculator of distances, 

 or analyzer of compounds, or labeler of species; 

 but him who through lower truths seeks higher 

 and eventually the highest — only the genuine man 

 of science, we say, can truly know how utterly 

 beyond not only human knowledge but human 



