Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/77

Rh science falsely so called," "to the Greeks foolishness;" these are the phrases of one of the earliest and highest of Christian authorities. In our own country the two most powerful of Christian movements, Puritanism and Evangelicalism, have been distinctly marked with this characteristic feature, although it might be possible to mention one or two learned Evangelicals and several learned Puritans. That there have been, and are, a vast number of men at the same time Christian and learned, does not affect the fact that Christianity holds itself aloof from and in a manner superior to learning. Such men, where their Christian feeling has been intense, have often spoken disparagingly of their own learning, as of a thing of little value, and have taken a pride in placing themselves on a level with the ignorant. If it is true that eloquent vindications of learning from the Christian point of view might be quoted, lofty assertions of the sympathy of Christianity for whatever is true and elevated, such assertions do not prove so much as is proved by the necessity of making them. If we admire them, it is rather because we love learning than because we love Christianity. We admire them as noble deviations from the Christian tradition, in a point where we have a misgiving that Christianity may be narrow. Yet this contempt for learning no Christian would admit to be equivalent to a contempt for knowledge. Knowledge, a certain kind of knowledge. Christians maintain to be the only thing worth having. Wealth, power, every thing that is counted desirable, they despise in comparison with a certain kind of knowledge. It is among these things comparatively despicable that they class what is commonly called learning. They despise it not as learning, but as learning comparatively worthless in quality, as being but a counterfeit of the true learning which it is happiness and salvation to possess.

Now, in this respect quite an opposite school hold the very same language. Scientific men resemble Christians, in treating with great contempt what goes by the name of learning and philosophy, in comparison with another sort of wisdom which they believe themselves to possess. Like Christians, they are no contemners of knowledge; on the contrary, in praise of knowledge they grow eloquent, and use language of scriptural elevation. "Wisdom is the principal thing, therefore get wisdom; and with all thy getting, get understanding." It is their unceasing cry that all good is to be expected from the increase of true knowledge; that the happiness, both of the race and individuals, depends upon the advance of real science, and the application of it to human life. Yet they have a contempt for learning, which is just as Christian in its tone as their love for knowledge. "Erudition" and "philosophy" are terms of contempt in their mouths. The first they consider to be, for the most part, a criminal waste of time; philosophy they denounce as consisting mainly of empty words, and offering solutions either imaginary or unintelligible of problems which are either imaginary or unintelligible themselves. In some scientific