Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 3.djvu/659

Rh and they have their value, which men of science by no means deny; but we have man before us, and society around us, as living and present facts open to immediate inquiry. Why go back to the ages when such a thing as the order of Nature was not even suspected, to get opinions concerning the constitution of things which are displayed before our very eyes. It is true that the study of the past can aid in the understanding of the present; but it is a deeper truth that the study of that which comes within the range of actual experience is the only key to the understanding of the past—Science must be the interpreter of History. The nature of man; the laws of his physical, mental, and moral constitution; their interdependence and reactions; and how he has come to be what he is: the nature of social aggregations; the natural laws by which they are regulated, and how they have come to be what we see them—are strict and legitimate scientific questions, and are no more to be determined by the literary method than the constitution of the sun or the origin of species. Biology, psychology, ethnology, and anthropology, are the names of branches of knowledge, imperfect indeed, but firmly established, which have been created by modern science, and which have already thrown a flood of light upon the nature of man. The scientific knowledge thus obtained is also the only indispensable basis for understanding the constitution and course of human society; and, if the reader cares to understand how essential one of those sciences is to the proper understanding of social phenomena, we recommend him to read the article in the present number of the on the bearings of biology upon sociological studies.

We have seen that the assumption of the writer in the Nation, that science is confined to the lower sphere of physical phenomena, is altogether gratuitous; and that man and society, if they are ever to be understood, must in future be mainly studied by the method of science which seeks for the establishment of natural laws. On what ground, then, can it be pretended that the study of man and human interests does not fall within the compass of scientific education? The writer seems to take it as a foregone conclusion that science has nothing to do with "the proper study of mankind;" yet scientific education has been long urged by its ablest advocates upon the very ground that it has every thing to do with it. Mr. J. S. Mill, although no partisan upon this question, explicitly denies the position taken by the Nation. In his celebrated address at the University of St. Andrew's, in 1867, he said: "Scientific education, apart from professional objects, is but a preparation for judging rightly of man and of his requirements and interests;" and he advocated compendious methods of classical study to allow more science in the universities, with a view to this very object.

In an article published in an English review in 1859, discussing the worth and claims of different kinds of knowledge, and which is one of the most powerful pleas for scientific education that have yet appeared—an article which was translated into half a dozen European languages, and which has been republished in all shapes and a score of times in this country—the claims of scientific education were placed upon the distinctive ground of its bearing upon the highest human interests. We extract a closing passage: