Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/256

246 literature, and the man of science equally require, and should cultivate through all parts of their education as well as in their future careers. My contention is that science should not be practically shut out from the view of a youth while his education is in progress, for the public Weal requires that a large number of scientific men should belong to the community. This is necessary because science has impressed its character upon the age in which we live, and, as science is not stationary but progressive, men are required to advance its boundaries, acting as pioneers in the onward march of states. Human progress is so identified with scientific thought, both in its conception and realization, that it seems as if they were alternative terms in the history of civilization. In literature, and even in art, a standard of excellence has been attained which we are content to imitate because we have been unable to surpass. But there is no such standard in science. Formerly, when the dark cloud was being dissipated which had obscured the learning of Greece and Rome, the diffusion of literature or the discovery of lost authors had a marked influence on advancing civilization. Now, a Chrysoloras might teach Greek in the Italian universities without hastening sensibly the onward march of Italy; a Poggio might discover copies of Lucretius and Quintilian without exercising a tithe of the influence on modern life that an invention by Stephenson or Wheatstone would produce. Nevertheless, the divorce of culture and science, which the present state of education in this country tends to produce, is deeply to be deplored, because a cultured intelligence adds greatly to the development of the scientific faculty. My argument is that no amount of learning without science suffices in the present state of the world to put us in a position which will enable England to keep ahead of, or even on a level with foreign nations as regards knowledge and its applications to the utilities of life. Take the example of any man of learning, and see how soon the direct consequences resulting from it disappear in the life of a nation, while the discoveries of a man of science remain productive amid all the shocks of empire. As I am in Aberdeen, I remember that the learned Dutchman Erasmus was introduced to England by the encouragement which he received from Hector Boece, the Principal of King's College in this university. Yet even in the case of Erasmus—who taught Greek at Cambridge, and did so much for the revival of classical literature as well as in the promotion of spiritual freedom—how little has civilization to ascribe to him in comparison with the discoveries of two other Cambridge men, Newton and Cavendish! The discoveries of Newton will influence the destinies of mankind to the end of the world. When he established the laws by which the motions of the great masses of matter in the universe are governed, he conferred an incalculable benefit upon the intellectual development of the human race. No great discovery flashes upon the world at once, and therefore Pope's lines on Newton are only a poetic fancy: