329 
then, can we doubt the utility of science in education ? I will 
only draw attention, in this connection, to one further considera- 
tion. Apart from the actual practical value of scientific know- 
ledge to those who have to lead hard practical lives, and who 
have not time to devote themselves to the attainment of a 
general education — apart from this, no one but a medical man 
can estimate, even imperfectly, the amount of misery, disease, 
and even vice, which may be justly attributed to a gross public 
ignorance of the commonest scientific laws, and which might be 
more or less completely removed by a more general diffusion of 
scientific knowledge. How many lives might be preserved, if 
mothers in general had but some knowledge of physiology, or 
had any accurate acquaintance with the structure and functions 
of the animal body ? How much suffering might be obviated, 
if there existed any generally-diffused knowledge of the laws of 
health. How many of the ills to which humanity is heir might 
be mitigated or altogether abolished, if sanitary science were at 
all generally understood by those who frame municipal laws ? 
Higher and deeper, however, than either discipline or utility 
is Culture, by which in its most general sense may be under- 
stood the bringing of man into harmony with the spiritual 
world, in which he truly lives and has his being. What can 
science claim as an apparatus of education on this score ? Taking 
science as it is at present, I think it may be at once conceded 
that it is in this respect markedly inferior to other non-scientific 
branches of study, with, however, the important proviso that 
the studies in question cannot claim any superiority in this 
matter, unless they are carried beyond a certain point, which 
is certainly not commonly reached in school life. The literary 
appreciation of Homer and iEschylus, of Juvenal and Tacitus, 
of Shakespeare and Tennyson, of Goethe and Schiller, presup- 
poses a high culture — much higher than mere science can 
afford — as much higher, in fact, as the spiritual part of the 
organism is higher than the merely natural. To yield this 
culture, however, the study of literature must be carried far 
enough to develop the higher faculties, to unfold the laws of 
our spiritual being, to elevate and purify our moral natures by 
communion with the great souls who have lived and laboured 
and passed away. When studied for mere commercial or utili- 
tarian ends, literature is no better than the driest and most 
repulsive of the sciences. It may very much be doubted if it 
be not worse. 
It may be willingly conceded, then, that the prosecution of 
literary studies, in their higher walks, gives rise to a form of 
culture, which is more elevated, more polished, and more spiritual 
VOL. x. 2 A 
