THE 
AMERICAN NATURALIST. 
Vou. XXII. JUNE, 1888. No. 258 
CULTURE AND SCIENCE. 
BY THEODORE GILL. 
A SHORT time ago, it will be remembered, an English gentle- 
man, eminent as a classical scholar, and as a man of refined 
and esthetic tastes, otherwise culture, delivered a lament in this city 
onthe decadence of literature and the usurpation of science. He 
Whom we are wont to call, without titular prenomen, Matthew Ar- 
nold, has long enjoyed the esteem of all English-speaking peoples, 
and I think that I can safely say that scientific men generally com- 
miserate with the eminent littérateur in his evident grief, although 
they must equally generally fail either to discover the ground for 
his prognostications or to dread the impending dilemma, The Cas- 
sandraic laments of the apostle of culture have long been re-echoing 
throughout Great and Greater Britain, and his latest utterances 
Were essentially the repetition of the wailings poured out into the 
Sympathetic ears of the select Cantabrigian scholars and published 
broadcast in the Nineteenth Century some eighteen months ago (Aug. 
1883, pp. 216-230). What his feelings were then and long before 
are thus told by him. | 
“< No wisdom, nor counsel, nor understanding, against the Eternal! 
says the Wise Man? Against the natural and appointed course of 
things there is no contending. Ten years ago I remarked on the 
gloomy prospect for letters in this country, inasmuch as while the 
aristocratic class, according to a famous dictum of Lord Beaconsfield, 
Was totally indifferent to letters, the friends of physical science to 
“y other hand, a growing and popular body, were in active revol 
against them. To deprive letters of the too great place they had 
hitherto filled in men’s estimation, and to substitute other studies 
