ON SCIENCE AND ART 155 



it for themselves after leaving school? Then you may 

 say, "If that is so, if the education was scientific, why 

 cannot you be satisfied with it?" I say, because al- 

 though it is a scientific training, it is of the most in- 

 adequate and inappropriate kind. If there is any good 

 at all in scientific education it is that men should be 

 trained, as I said before, to know things for themselves 

 at first hand, and that they should understand every 

 step of the reason of that which they do. 



I desire to speak with the utmost respect of that 

 science philology of which grammar is a part and 

 parcel; yet everybody knows that grammar, as it is 

 usually learned at school, affords no scientific training. 

 It is taught just as you would teach the rules of chess 

 or draughts. On the other hand, if I am to understand 

 by a literary education the study of the literatures of 

 either ancient or modern nations but especially those 

 of antiquity, and especially that of ancient Greece; if 

 this literature is studied, not merely from the point of 

 view of philological science, and its practical application 

 to the interpretation of texts, but as an exemplification 

 of and commentary upon the principles of art; if you 

 look upon the literature of a people as a chapter in the 

 development of the human mind, if you work out this 

 in a broad spirit, and with such collateral references to 

 morals and politics, and physical geography, and the 

 like as are needful to make you comprehend what the 

 meaning of ancient literature and civilisation is, then, 

 assuredly, it affords a splendid and noble education. 

 But I still think it is susceptible of improvement, and 

 that no man will ever comprehend the real secret of the 

 difference between the ancient world and our present 

 time, unless he has learned to see the difference which 

 the late development of physical science has made be- 

 tween the thought of this day and the thought of that, 



