Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/767

Rh it in the acquisition of first-hand knowledge; the other turns it upon books, and exercises the mind upon verbal representations which are accepted in the place of actual things.

This statement, however, though broadly true, requires qualification. Scientific education, of course, neither ignores books nor discredits them for their proper uses; it only subordinates them to its main object—employing them as auxiliaries in the study of Nature. The case is sometimes put extravagantly; extreme statement being thought needful to counteract extreme errors. Prof. Agassiz, for example, as is well known, was often hot in his denunciations of books; but it was their abuse at which his wrath was kindled. He had little patience with the servile habit of learning lessons and quoting books; and he waxed indignant when he saw students stopping with the manual and interposing it between the mind and Nature. His excellent rule was, first learn to know something directly about the subject yourself, and then you will be competent to deal with the representations of others. He saw that it was of primary and vital moment that the student should first of all come at the living phenomena, and learn to read them and think about them independently; and he saw, too, that books are the potent agents by which this desirable object is constantly defeated. Scientific education, therefore, only wars with the perversion of books. Scholastic education, on the other hand, does not propose to go beyond the books. Letters, literature, things written, and the modes of representation, are its ends and its ultimate objects. That the manner is of more account than the matter is the law of gravitation in "culture" or literary education; it governs every thing. The scholar is of course a man, and recognizes as an accident of his being that he is placed in the midst of a system of things which we call Nature. He cannot quite ignore it if he would; he cannot help knowing something of the world he lives in. But he is not concerned about it. He is satisfied with the knowledge of Nature that he picks up inevitably. Natural things, the facts, laws, and order of the world, are not to him objects of mental exercise. He does not recognize them as the means of education; he gives his life to books.

There is, of course, no antagonism between literature and science as mere pursuits; but in the field of education, or as representing methods of cultivating the human mind, they are inveterate rivals. This was less apparent when education was limited to the favored classes, and the scientists and the littérateurs could go their respective ways in peace. But in the new dispensation of popular enlightenment, when everybody is to be educated and everybody is to be taxed for the purpose, a conflict arises as to which of the two systems shall have precedence. The people are to be secured a larger measure of mental cultivation. It is their destiny to be occupied with the matter and forces of Nature, and they are creatures of an inexorable system of natural law: shall their education be conformed to these facts, and deal with the direct phenomena of experience, or shall it stop with symbols and be predominantly an affair of books? The issue can neither be forced nor escaped; it belongs to time and the growth of ideas. It is not that Literature is in the saddle and is to be unhorsed by Science; but the undoubted tendencies of the past must work in future with increasing power, and lead, we believe, to the ultimate ascendency of the study of natural science.

But, while recognizing the direction of the great mental movement which marks especially the present age, it will be wise to moderate our expectations and recognize also the formidable character of the difficulties which stand in the way of scientific education. Among these is its great expensiveness. Literary education has here an enormous advantage. Books are cheap. It