Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 32.djvu/36

26 by the attentive human spirit. Harmonic relation apprehended by reason we call Law and its embodiment Science; the same apprehended by the imagination and æsthetic sense, we call Beauty, and its embodiment Art, music. Now, in music there are two kinds of harmony, simultaneous and consecutive—chordal harmony and melody. These must be combined to produce the grandest effect. So in cosmic order, too, there are two kinds of harmonic relation—the coexistent in space and the consecutive in time. The law of gravitation expresses the universal harmonic interrelation of objects coexistent in space, the law of evolution, the universal harmonic relation of forms successive in time. Of the divine spheral music, the one is the chordal harmony, the other the consecutive harmony or melody. Combined they form the divine chorus which "the morning stars sang together."

 

JESUIT with whom I was conversing on educational questions once told me, in depreciation of my position as a man of science, that the naturalist of to-day can be a physiologist or a physicist, mineralogist, geologist, zoologist, botanist, or chemist, and no more; that he can not overlook the whole of science, but can at most only really know a part of his own branch, from which he is not, of course, justified in drawing any general conclusion. It was otherwise with the Jesuit, who excluded himself from no department of knowledge. This man touched accurately what is now recognized as a growing peril to the general significance of science in mental development—the continuous contraction of the individual's field of labor, or specializing. It is right for naturalists in these days to make themselves masters in their own branch, and masters usually in that alone, unless they are in a position to obtain a survey over the whole of the sciences. But it is wrong, in the present condition of knowledge, to deny them a general acquaintance with all scientific matters. That would be to put their capacity below that of the Jesuit, who only desires to obtain a superficial view of science in order to aid him in holding his position in sophistical disputations against it and in favor of his own dogma. Most naturalists and scientifically educated persons have, moreover, been trained in a liberal range of studies, and are well qualified to form a judgment on general scientific as well as upon important and fundamental philosophical questions. Yet we are living, to a large extent, upon the provision left by the fathers. The dividing up is daily becoming more and more minute, and is destined in time to throw a broad shadow over the outlook, unless the demand for a many-sided basis of training as a defense against the evil is universally 