8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ness, we may know it ; and I may add that it is because in our com- 

 mon schools we are completely outgrowing it, that day by day we see 

 in them so much new life. 



So much in regard to the debt which a liberal education is des- 

 tined soon to owe to the progress of psychology, giving prevalence to 

 truer views in regard to its rudimentary processes. Let me pass to 

 the second influence, which is acting powerfully to modify all our 

 previous conceptions of the subject ; I mean the progress of modern 

 linguistic science. I take this next in order because, contrary to the 

 current of thought prevailing at the present moment, I believe the 

 old doctrine will still be found to hold true, even after physical science 

 shall have at last found its true place in the new education, that the 

 study of that wonderful world of matter, which is the stage on which 

 man plays his earthly part, wonderful as it is, is yet inferior in dignity 

 and importance to the study of the being and doing of the actor who 

 plays his part thereon. Scientific studies, though for the time being 

 in the ascendant, yet, even when all their rights shall be accorded to 

 them, will, in a well-balanced system, take their place a little below 

 ethical studies. This, I say, as not believing in the current material- 

 istic philosophy in any of its forms, but as being an immaterialist, as 

 I must phrase it, since we have been robbed by unworthy and de- 

 grading associations of the word spiritualist. But, without raising 

 any question of precedence between branches of study which are both 

 essential to any true conception of a complete education, let me pro- 

 ceed to point out that the progress of linguistic science and of modern 

 literature has totally transformed the educational character and posi- 

 tion of the ethical studies of which they are the instrument and the 

 embodiment. When the Revival of Learning gave birth to the present 

 classical system of literary, or, as I have termed it, ethical liberal study, 

 it did so by putting into the hands of scholars not merely two gram- 

 mars as instruments of youthful mental discipline, as the advocates of 

 the grindstone-system would fain have us believe, but two languages 



unless somebody shows me how to put my reading and writing to wise and good 

 purposes. 



" Suppose any one were to argue that medicine is of no use, because it could be proved 

 statistically that the percentage of deaths was just the same among people who had been 

 taught how to open a medicine-chest, and among those who did not so much as know 

 the key by sight. The argument is absurd ; but it is not more preposterous than that 

 against which I am contending. The only medicine for suffering, crime, and all the 

 other woes of mankind, is wisdom. Teach a man to read and write, and you have put 

 into his hands the great keys of the wisdom-box. But it is quite another matter whether 

 he ever opens the box or not. And he is as likely to poison as to cure himself, if, with- 

 out guidance, he swallows the first drug that comes to hand. In these times a man may 

 as well be purblind as unable to read — lame, as unable to write. But I protest, that if 

 I thought the alternative were a necessary one, I would rather that the children of the 

 poor should grow up ignorant of both these mighty arts than that they should remain 

 ignorant of that knowledge to which these arts are means." — (Huxley, " Lay Sermons" 

 p. 43.) 



