172 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVIII. Ko. 449. 



not a negative but a positive exemplification 

 of our proposition. For in that wider 

 sense there is a science of which Rome 

 was the mother, as Greece was of geometry 

 and mathematics. The term science may 

 be extended so widely as to allow us to 

 speak of the science of law— meaning the 

 doctrine of rights and obligations, in its 

 most definite and yet most comprehensive 

 form ; in short the science of jurispru- 

 dence. * * * And thus two of the great 

 elements of a thorough intellectual cul- 

 ture — mathematics and jurisprudence — are 

 an inheritance which we derive from ages 

 long gone by ; from the two great nations of 

 antiquity. ' ' 



So far Whewell, who in attempting to 

 elevate Roman law to the dignity of a sci- 

 ence forgot that much of it was unscien- 

 tific to the last degree, and tended to pro- 

 duce, not organic national equilibrium, but 

 to set the patricians against the plebeians, 

 and both against the bondmen, who often 

 showed finer qualities than either. Little 

 wonder is it that Rome fell, unsaved by her 

 laws. 



Let us see whether a different viewpoint 

 and source of origin for the science of law 

 and equally for all scientific relations-might 

 not be obtained. Huxley thus puts it: "It 

 is a very plain and elementary truth that 

 the life, the fortune and the happiness of 

 every one of us and, more or less, of those 

 who are connected with us, do depend upon 

 our knowing something of the rules of a 

 game infinitely more difficult and compli- 

 cated than chess. It is a game which has 

 been played for untold ages, every man and 

 woman of us being one of the two players 

 in a game of his or her own. The chess 

 board is the world, the pieces are the phe- 

 nomena of the universe, the rules of the 

 game are what we call the laws of nature. 

 * * * Education is learning the rules of 

 this mighty game. In other words educa- 



tion is the instruction of the intellect in 

 the laws of nature, under which name I 

 include not merely things and their forces, 

 but men and their ways ; and the fashioning 

 of the affections and of the will into an 

 earnest and loving desire to move in har- 

 mony with those laws. * * * The object of 

 what we commonly call education — that 

 education in which man intervenes and 

 which I shall distinguish as artificial educa- 

 tion—is to make good defects in nature's 

 methods, to prepare the child to receive 

 nature's education. * * * In short all ar- 

 tificial education ought to be an anticipa- 

 tion of natural education. And a liberal 

 education is an artificial education which 

 has not only prepared a man to escape the 

 great evils of disobedience to natural laws, 

 but has trained him to appreciate and to 

 seize upon the rewards which nature scat- 

 ters with as free a hand as her penalties." 

 To pursue Huxley's reasoning to its ulti- 

 mate limit, advanced teaching of all the 

 laws of nature is the highest function of 

 the university in relation to our common 

 life. In other words to make each man 

 who leaves its portals most highly qualified 

 for useful, intellectual, manly life. But, as 

 I hope to show later, this qualification is to 

 enable him to use wisely — not meanly— the 

 forces around him, so as to build society 

 into an organism. 



Therefore, every upright pursuit in life 

 which man enters on should have the high- 

 est principles and practice governing it 

 represented and taught in our universities, 

 by the best men in the most perfectly 

 equipped manner. This may be an ideal 

 at present. Granted, it is nevertheless one 

 toward which, I am pei-suaded, every uni- 

 versity must move. In this manner science 

 will confer the dignity that is deserved on 

 the physician's scalpel, the bricklayer's 

 trowel, the chemist's test-tube, the engi- 

 neer's lathe, the biologist's microscope, the 



