Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/444

438 alone. Though the study of nature is fitted to develop great mental qualities—perseverance, honesty, judgment and initiative—we do not suppose that it completes man's mental equipment. Though the knowledge of nature calls upon, excites and gratifies the imagination to a degree and in a way which is peculiar to itself, we do not suppose that it furnishes the opportunity for all forms of mental activity. The great joys of art, the delights and entertainment to be derived from the romance and history of human character, are not parts of it. They must never be neglected. But are we not justified in asserting that, for some two hundred years or more, these 'entertainments' have been pursued in the name, of the highest education and study to the exclusion of the far weightier and more necessary knowledge of nature? 'This should ye have done, and yet not left the other undone,' may justly be said to those who have conducted the education of our higher schools and universities along the pleasant lines of literature and history, to the neglect of the urgently-needed 'improvement of natural knowledge.' Nero was probably a musician of taste and training, and it was artistic and high-class music which he played while Rome was burning: so too the studies of the past carried on at Oxford have been charming and full of beauty, whilst England has lain, and lies, in mortal peril for lack of knowledge of nature.

It seems to be beyond dispute that the study, firstly of Latin, and much more recently of Greek, was followed in this university and in grammar schools, not as educational exercises in the use of language, but as keys to unlock the store-rooms—the books—in which the knowledge of the ancients was contained. So long as these keys were needed, it was reasonable enough that every well-educated man should spend such time as was necessary in providing himself with the key. But now that the store-rooms are empty—now that their contents have been appropriated and scattered far and wide—in all languages of civilization, it seems to be merely an unreasoning continuation of superannuated custom to go on with the provision of these keys. Such, however, is the force of habit that it continues: new and ingenious reasons for the practise are put forward, whilst its original object is entirely forgotten.

In the first place, it has come to be regarded as a mark of good breeding, and thus an end in itself, for a man to have some first-hand acquaintance with Latin and Greek authors, even when he knows no other literature. It is a fashion, like the wearing of a court dress. This can not be held to justify the employment of most of the time and energy of youth in its acquirement.

A second reason which is now put forward for the practise is that the effort and labor expended on the provision of these keys—even though it is admitted that they are useless—is a wonderful and incomparably fine exercise of the mind, fitting it for all sorts of work. A