Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/470

454 was supposed to have his friends who would vouch for the truth of his statements, and he stood best before the courts whose vouching friends or compurgators were the most influential. No device for the establishment of despotism and wrong has ever been more efficient than the system of compurgation.

In modern legal practice all this has been changed, and the law of evidence has been vastly developed, until it constitutes one of the most important departments of law; and to-day, in the hearing of cases, the larger share of the time is devoted to the establishment of the facts, and the greatest skill of attorneys is exercised in this branch of the case; and every great lawyer and jurist now understands that it is easier to grasp the principles of the law than to reach the facts which should guide in their application. Thus it is that a knowledge of the facts and the principles of science is essential to him who would be successful as advocate or as judge.

Perhaps the student aspires to be an historian. In the past, history has been devoted chiefly to the exploits of heroes and the story of wars; but history is now being speedily reorganized and rewritten upon a scientific basis, to exhibit the growth of culture in all its grand departments. History itself is now a science, and is no longer an art in which men exploit in rhetorical paragraphs.

In many ways and on every hand it can be shown that scientific education furnishes the training that is needed for life in modern civilization.

I refrain from alluding to the relations of such a school to the stupendous industrial accomplishments of modern civilization, and to the training demanded thereby; first, because that field has already been well cultivated; and, second, because it has been lately assumed that scientific education is wholly utilitarian. It is true that all utilitarian training is scientific, but that is not the only characteristic of scientific training—it is catholic, it is universal.

Scientific education gives the highest mental training; scientific education means a training in modern scientific culture. What this culture is, has already been outlined. It is the product of all the mental endeavor of the race to which we belong. This struggle for improvement, this grand endeavor to secure happiness through human activities, which have been defined as the humanities, began in remote antiquity. Where our race lived in savagery, we know not. All we know is that at some time and in some place our ancestors were savages. In Asia and in Europe and in Africa this struggle was continued. Slowly and painfully, with many misfortunes and many reversions, the Aryan race has steadily moved forward in the march of culture, and every branch of the race has contributed its part. Every great artisan and artist, every great statesman, every great linguist, every great philosopher, every great thinker in all that time, has contributed his part; and, more than this, our race has borrowed from