48 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters, 
not forgetting to note the practical applications of these various 
arts and sciences, or omitting to call in the aid of practitioners for 
purposes of demonstration. Arithmetic and geometry had been 
studied in the earliest year of the course.^^ 
All this looks somewhat as if Dr. Johnson were in the right. 
And yet, while Milton’s curriculum incidentally imparts a great 
deal of information, both curious and useful, his ultimate purpose, 
even in the study of external nature, was to develop the mind 
through contemplation. This purpose he makes very clear at the 
outset, when he says that we cannot in any other way arrive so 
clearly at the knowledge of things invisible as we can by studying 
the visible creation.^® In one passage of Paradise Lost Milton com¬ 
pares Nature, or the entire order of the Universe, to a ‘‘scale,” 
or ladder, 
‘ ‘ Whereon, 
In contemplation of created things 
By steps we may ascend to God.”^^ 
And in his essay on The Reason of Church Government Milton 
expressly states that the knowledge of God and of his true worship, 
and what is infallibly good and happy in the state of man’s life, 
what in itself evil and miserable, is the only high valuable wis¬ 
dom indeed.^® 
Furthermore, the very multitude of subjects covered in so short 
a time would make it impossible for the student to become very 
proficient in any one art or science. The course is distinctly a 
survey; but the reading of one or more unified treatises on each 
subject, though not expected to make the student even an amateur, 
would give him just what Milton desired to impart—an insight into 
the spirit and method of natural science. A final circumstance, 
of a kind to show that Milton looked upon natural science de¬ 
cidedly from the cultural point of view, is this: the study of ex¬ 
ternal nature is to be rounded off by reading those poets who treat 
of it, and add to it what Wordsworth calls “the breath and finer 
spirit of all knowledge, the impassioned expression which is in 
the countenance of all science. 
Prose Works, 3 :469. 
3:464. 
Paradise Lost, 5:507-512. 
-uprose Works, 2:473. 
Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, 1800; Poetical Works, ed. by Hutchinson, Oxford. 
1913, p. 938. 
