Page:Essays and Addresses.djvu/652

 men who can contribute to the advance of their respective sciences and arts, men who can originate and invent. There is a vast world-competition in scientific progress, on which industrial and commercial progress must ultimately depend; and it is of national importance for every country that it should have men who are not merely expert in things already known, but who can take their places in the forefront of the onward march.

But meanwhile the claims of literary culture, as part of the general higher education, must not be neglected or undervalued. It may be that, in the pre-scientific age, those claims were occasionally stated in a somewhat exaggerated or one-sided manner. But it remains as true as ever that literary studies form an indispensable element of a really liberal education. And the educational value of good literature is all the greater in our day, because the progress of knowledge more and more enforces early specialisation. Good literature tends to preserve the breadth and variety of intellectual interests. It also tends to cultivate the sympathies; it exerts a humanizing influence by the clear and beautiful expression of noble thoughts and sentiments; by the contemplation of great actions and great characters; by following the varied development of human life, not only as an evolution governed by certain laws, but also as a drama full of interests which intimately concern us. Moreover, as has well been said, if literature be viewed as one of the fine arts, it is found to be the most altruistic of them all,