12 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. IV. No. 79. 



THE CULTURE GIVEN BY SCIENCE. 

 To be a man of broadest culture is a bigli 

 ideal. Fortunately, the idea and the as- 

 sociations conveyed by this word ' culture ' 

 are still of the finest, the noblest. But 

 when scanned in the new light of the 

 present, has not the flower of culture, like 

 everything else of the best, gained a living 

 heart of science, taken on the pure, high, 

 unfading colors of science, the benign em- 

 press of our modern world ? And with this 

 change has not culture developed a firmer 

 moral fiber from the inexorable, inevitable 

 insistence of science on a moral courage in 

 her votaries which would sacrifice all un- 

 flinchingly in the pure cult of truth ? 



Before the age of science the man of the 

 then culture was, as his fellows, in fear of 

 being known to have been wrong. 



Said Lowell : " There are three short and 

 simple words, the hardest of all to pro- 

 nounce in any language (and I suspect they 

 were no easier before the confusion of 

 tongues), but which no man or nation that 

 cannot utter can claim to have arrived at 

 manhood. These words are, I was wrong.'" 

 Even Goethe, the very highest type of 

 culture not based on a core of science, even 

 Goethe, with his calm and coldness as of 

 the immortals, with his magnificent appe- 

 tite and digestion, even Goethe mouths and 

 sulks and rants like a stupidly obstinate 

 boy when even his friends declare that in 

 the explanation of colors he is wrong and 

 the man of science, Newton, is right. He 

 snarls and spits to the very last, and, like 

 his countryman, Hegel, makes himself dis- 

 gusting by blaspheming Newton. 



Says J. H. Stirling, Hegel's devoted apol- 

 ogist : "One thing, however, he will not 

 think excusable even in a Hegel : this let- 

 ter's unsparing bitterness of tone to him — 

 Newton— whom as a productive thinker 

 mankind have so much reason sincerely to 

 thank and supremely to honor." 



Says Helmholtz : " To give some idea of 



the passionate way in which Goethe, usu- 

 ally so temperate and even courtier-like, 

 attacks Newton, I quote from a few pages 

 of the controversial part of his work the 

 following expressions, which he applies to 

 the propositions of this consummate thinker 

 in physical and astronomical science — ' in- 

 credibly impudent ;' ' mere twaddle ;' 'lu- 

 dicrous explanation;' 'but I see nothing 

 will do but Ijang, and plenty of it.' " 



Nothing could more exactly illustrate 

 the change of heart which culture has un- 

 dergone. Could any one imagine Justus 

 von Liebig berating Pasteur for overthrow- 

 ing utterly Liebig's theory of fermentation? 



The friends of Darwin bemoaned the in- 

 estimably valuable time which he habitually 

 gave to considering the weakest objections 

 of the feeblest objectors, and even to set- 

 ting forth and clothing all objections with 

 his own strength. 



The culture given by science is strikingly 

 characterized by equipoise of mind, impar- 

 tiality of view, freedom from obscurations 

 due to selfishness, a taking of self objec- 

 tively. 



This comes in part from the fact that high 

 scientific instruction or attainment cannot 

 be divorced from scientific investigation. 



Thus, in Germany, the leader of modern 

 culture, '' a university professor is both a 

 teacher and a scientific investigator, and 

 the latter is considered the more important." 

 "Again, when a professor is mentioned the 

 question is asked : What has he written ? 

 What are his scientific achievements? " 



The culture given by science relegates to 

 the moribund institutions of tradition the 

 old hypothesis that truth is given and fixed, 

 and needs only to be transmitted unchanged. 

 We have seen in our own generation 

 changes accepted and made part of regular 

 university instruction which are so deep- 

 reaching as to under-cut the knowledge 

 thought fixed for twenty centuries. Wit- 

 ness the non-Euclidean geometry and evo- 



