July 17, 1903.] 



SCIENCE. 



77 



leet has widened wonderfully during the 

 past one hiindred years, and the scientific 

 method of inquiry has been the means of 

 that widening. The most convinced ex- 

 ponents and advocates of humanism now 

 recognize that science is the 'paramount 

 force of the modern as distinguished from 

 the antique and the media?val spirit' (John 

 Addington Symonds— 'Culture'), and that 

 'an interpenetration of humanism with sci- 

 ence and of science with humanism is the 

 condition of the highest culture.' 



Emerson taught that the acquisition of 

 some form of manual skill and the practice 

 of some form of manual labor were essen- 

 tial elements of culture, and this idea has 

 more and more become accepted in the .sys- 

 tematic education of youth. 



The idea of some sort of bodily excel- 

 lence was, to be sure, not absent in the old 

 conception of the cultivated man. The 

 gentleman could ride well, dance grace- 

 fully and fence with skill, but the modern 

 conception of bodily skill as an element in 

 cultivation is more comprehensive, and in- 

 cludes that habitual contact with the ex- 

 ternal world which Emerson deemed essen- 

 tial to real cultiu-e. 



AVe have become convinced that some in- 

 timate, sympathetic acquaintance with the 

 natural objects of the earth and sky adds 

 greatly to the happiness of life, and that 

 this acquaintance should be begun in child- 

 hood and be developed all through adoles- 

 cence and maturity. A brook, a hedge- 

 row or a garden is an inexhaustible teacher 

 of wonder, reverence and love. 



The scientists in.sist to-day on nature 

 study for children, but we teachers ought 

 long ago to have learnt from the poets the 

 value of this element in education. The 

 idea of culture has always included a quick 

 and wide sympathy with men ; it should 

 hereafter include sympathy with nature, 

 and particularly with its living forms, a 



sympathy based on some accurate obser- 

 vation of nature. 



We proceed to examine four elements of 

 culture : 



Character. The moral sense of the mod- 

 ern world makes character a more im- 

 portant element than it used to be in the 

 ideal of a cultivated man. Now character 

 is formed, as Goethe said, in the 'stream 

 of the world,' not in stillness, or isolation, 

 but in the quick moving tides of the busy 

 world, the world of nature and the world 

 of mankind. To the old idea of culture 

 some knowledge of history was indispensa- 

 ble. 



Now, history is a representation of the 

 stream of the world, or of some little poi'- 

 tion of that stream, 100, 500, 2,000 years 

 ago. Acquaintance with some part of the 

 present stream ought to be more formative 

 of character, and more instructive as re- 

 gards external nature and the nature of 

 man, than any partial survey of the stream 

 that was flowing centuries ago. 



The rising generation should think hard 

 and feel keenly, just where the men and 

 women who constitute the actual human 

 world are thinking and feeling most to- 

 day. The panorama of to-day's events is 

 an invaluable and a new means of develop- 

 ing good judgment, good feeling, and the 

 passion for social service, or, in other 

 words, of securing cultivation. 



But some one will say the stream of the 

 world is foul. True in part. The stream 

 is what it has been, a mixture of foulness 

 and purity, of meanness and majesty; but 

 it has nourished individual virtue and race 

 civilization. Literature and history are a 

 similar mixture, and yet are the tradi- 

 tional means of culture. Are not the 

 Greek tragedies means of culture? Yet 

 they are full of incest, murder and human 

 sacrifices to lustful and revengeful gods. 



Language. A cultivated man should ex- 

 press himself by tongue or pen with some 



