SCIENCE AND LITERATURE 45 



more regarding each other in our day is well 

 founded. That such distrust exists is very evident. 

 Professor Huxley taunts the poets with "sensual 

 caterwauling," and the poets taunt the professor 

 and his ilk with gross materialism. 



Science is said to be democratic, its aims and 

 methods in keeping with the great modern move- 

 ment; while literature is alleged to be aristocratic 

 in its spirit and tendencies. Literature is for the 

 few; science is for the many. Hence their oppo- 

 sition in this respect. 



Science is founding schools and colleges from 

 which the study of literature, as such, is to be 

 excluded; and it is becoming clamorous for the 

 positions occupied by the classics in the curriculum 

 of the older institutions. As a reaction against 

 the extreme partiality for classical studies, the study 

 of names instead of things, which has so long been 

 shown in our educational system, this new cry is 

 wholesome and good; but so far as it implies that 

 science is capable of taking the place of the great 

 literatures as an instrument of high culture, it is 

 mischievous and misleading. 



About the intrinsic value of science, its value as 

 a factor in our civilization, there can be but one 

 opinion; but about its value to the scholar, the 

 thinker, the man of letters, there is room for very 

 divergent views. It is certainly true that the great 

 ages of the world have not been ages of exact sci- 

 ence; nor have the great literatures, in which so 

 much of the power and vitality of the race have 



