positions in which it should be their highest duty to do, thoroughly,
that which they are most capable of doing; but, as far as possible,
university training shuts out of the minds of those among them, who are
subjected to it, the prospect that there is anything in the world for
which they are specially fitted. Imagine the success of the attempt to
still the intellectual hunger of any of the men I have mentioned, by
putting before him, as the object of existence, the successful mimicry
of the measure of a Greek song, or the roll of Ciceronian prose! Imagine
how much success would be likely to attend the attempt to persuade such
men that the education which leads to perfection in such elegances is
alone to be called culture; while the facts of history, the process of
thought, the conditions of moral and social existence and the laws of
physical nature are left to be dealt with as they may by outside
barbarians!
It is not thus that the German universities, from being beneath notice a
century ago, have become what they are now--the most intensely
cultivated and the most productive intellectual corporations the world
has ever seen.
The student who repairs to them sees in the list of classes and of
professors a fair picture of the world of knowledge. Whatever he needs
to know there is some one ready to teach him, some one competent to
discipline him in the way of learning; whatever his special bent, let
him but be able and diligent, and in due time he shall find distinction
and a career. Among his professors he sees men whose names are known and
revered throughout the civilized world; and their living example infects
him with a noble ambition and a love for the spirit of work.
The Germans dominate the intellectual world by virtue of the same simple
secret as that which made Napoleon the master of old Europe. They have
declared that careers shall be open to talents and every Bursch marches
with a professor's gown in his knapsack. Let him become a great scholar,
or a man of science, and ministers will compete for his services. In
Germany, they do not leave the chance of his holding the office he would
render illustrious to the mercies of a hot canvass and the final wisdom
of a mob of country parsons.
* * * * *
Moral and social science--one of the greatest and most fruitful of our
future classes, I hope--at present lacks only one thing in our
programme, and that is a teacher. A considerable want, no doubt; but it
must be recollected that it is much better to want a teacher than to
want the desire to learn.
Further, we need what, for want of a better name, I must call Physical
Geography. What I mean is that which the Germans call "_Erdkunde_." It
is a description of the earth, of its place and relation to other
bodies; of its general structure and of its great features--winds,
tides, mountains, plains: of the chief forms of the vegetable and
animal worlds, of the varieties of man. It is the peg upon which the
greatest quantity of useful and entertaining scientific information can
be suspended.[5]
Literature is not upon the college programme; but I hope some day to see
it there. For literature is the greatest of all sources of refined
pleasure, and one of the great uses of a liberal education is to enable
us to enjoy that pleasure. There is scope enough for the purposes of
liberal education in the study of the rich treasures of our own language
alone. All that is needed is direction, and the cultivation of a refined
taste by attention to sound criticism. But there is no reason why French
and German should not be mastered sufficiently to read what is worth
reading in those languages with pleasure and with profit.
And finally, by-and-by, we must have history; treated not as a
succession of battles and dynasties; not as a series of biographies; not
as evidence that Providence has always been on the side of either Whigs
or Tories, but as the development of man in times past and in other
conditions than our own.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] Professor Huxley's "Physiography," published by D. Appleton & Co.,
New York, is an excellent text-book for the study he here recommends. It
has been drawn upon for two chapters of the first volume of
"Masterpieces of Science." Equally to be recommended are "Physical
Geography" and "Elementary Physical Geography," by Prof. W. M. Davis, of
Harvard University, published by Ginn & Co., Boston.
SCIENCE AND CULTURE
PROFESSOR T. H. HUXLEY
[Sir Josiah Mason's Science College, Birmingham, was opened
in 1880 with an address by Professor Huxley which appears in
full in the third volume of his essays published by D.
Appleton & Co., New York. As here given passages of local and
temporary interest have been omitted.]
From the time that the first suggestion to introduce physical science
into ordinary education was timidly whispered, until now, the advocates
of scientific education have met with opposition of two kinds. On the
one hand, they have been pooh-poohed by the men of business who pride
themselves on being the representatives of practicality; while, on the
other hand, they have been excommunicated by the classical scholars in
their capacity of Levites in charge of the ark of culture and
monopolists of liberal education.
The practical men believed that the idol whom they worship--rule of
thumb--has been the source of the past prosperity and will suffice for
the future welfare of the arts and manufactures. They were of opinion
that science is speculative rubbish; that theory and practice have
nothing to do with one another; and that the scientific habit of mind is
an impediment, rather than an aid, in the conduct of ordinary affairs.
I have used the past tense in speaking of the practical men--for
although they were very formidable thirty years ago, I am not sure that
the pure species has not been extirpated. In fact, so far as mere
argument goes, they have been subjected to such a fire from the
netherworld that it is a miracle if any have escaped. But I have
remarked that your typical practical man has an unexpected resemblance
to one of Milton's angels. His spiritual wounds, such as are inflicted
by logical weapons, may be as deep as a well and as wide as a
church-door, but beyond shedding a few drops of ichor, celestial or
otherwise, he is no whit the worse.
* * * * *
How often have we not been told that the study of physical science is
incompetent to confer culture; that it touches none of the higher
problems of life; and, what is worse, that the continual devotion to
scientific studies tends to generate a narrow and bigoted belief in the
applicability of scientific methods to the search after truth of all
kinds? How frequently one has reason to observe that no reply to a
troublesome argument tells so well as calling its author a "mere
scientific specialist." And, as I am afraid it is not permissible to
speak of this form of opposition to scientific education in the past
tense; may we not expect to be told that this, not only omission, but
prohibition, of "mere literary instruction and education" is a patent
example of scientific narrow-mindedness?
I am not acquainted with Sir Josiah Mason's reasons for declaring that
the college shall make no provision for "mere literary instruction and
education," but if, as I apprehend the case, he refers to the ordinary
classical course of our schools and universities by the name of "mere
literary instruction and education," I venture to offer sundry reasons
of my own in support of that action.
For I hold very strongly by two convictions. The first is, that neither
the discipline nor the subject-matter of classical education is of such
direct value to the student of physical science as to justify the
expenditure of valuable time upon either; and the second is, that for
the purpose of attaining real culture, an exclusively scientific
education is at least as effectual as an exclusively literary education.
I need hardly point out to you that these opinions, especially the
latter, are diametrically opposed to those of the great majority of
educated Englishmen, influenced as they are by school and university
traditions. In their belief, culture is obtainable only by a liberal
education; and a liberal education is synonymous, not merely with
education and instruction in literature, but in one particular form of
literature, namely, that of Greek and Roman antiquity. They hold that
the man who has learned Latin and Greek, however little, is educated;
while he who is versed in other branches of knowledge, however deeply,
is a more or less respectable specialist, not admissible into the
cultured caste. The stamp of the educated man, the university degree, is
not for him.
I am too well acquainted with the generous catholicity of spirit, the
true sympathy with scientific thought, which pervades the writings of
our chief apostle of culture to identify him with these opinions; and
yet one may cull from one and another of those epistles to the
Philistines, which so much delight all who do not answer to that name,
sentences which lend them some support.
Mr. Arnold tells us that the meaning of culture is "to know the best
that has been thought and said in the world." It is the criticism of
life contained in literature. That criticism regards "Europe as being,
for intellectual and spiritual purposes, one great confederation, bound
to a joint action and working to a common result; and whose members
have, for their common outfit, a knowledge of Greek, Roman, and Eastern
antiquity, and of one another. Special, local, and temporary advantages
being put out of account, that modern nation will in the intellectual
and spiritual sphere make most progress, which most thoroughly carries
out this program. And what is that but saying that we too, all of us, as
individuals, the more thoroughly we carry it out, shall make the more
progress?"[6]
We have here to deal with two distinct propositions. The first, that a
criticism of life is the essence of culture; the second, that
literature contains the materials which suffice for the construction of
such criticism.
I think that we must all assent to the first proposition. For culture
certainly means something quite different from learning or technical
skill. It implies the possession of an ideal, and the habit of
critically estimating the value of things by comparison with a theoretic
standard. Perfect culture should supply a complete theory of life, based
upon a clear knowledge alike of its possibilities and of its
limitations.
But we may agree to all this, and yet strongly dissent from the
assumption that literature alone is competent to supply this knowledge.
After having learnt all that Greek, Roman, and Eastern antiquity have
thought and said, and all that modern literature have to tell us, it is
not self-evident that we have laid a sufficiently broad and deep
foundation for that criticism of life, which constitutes culture.
Indeed, to anyone acquainted with the scope of physical science, it is
not at all evident. Considering progress only in the "intellectual and
spiritual sphere," I find myself wholly unable to admit that either
nations or individuals will really advance if their common outfit draws
nothing from the stores of physical science. I should say that an army,
without weapons of precision and with no particular base of operations,
might more hopefully enter upon a campaign on the Rhine than a man,
devoid of a knowledge of what physical science has done in the last
century, upon a criticism of life.
* * * * *
The representatives of the Humanists, in the nineteenth century, take
their stand upon classical education as the sole avenue to culture, as
firmly as if we were still in the age of Renascence. Yet, surely, the
present intellectual relations of the modern and the ancient worlds are
profoundly different from those which obtained three centuries ago.
Leaving aside the existence of a great and characteristically modern
literature, of modern painting, and, especially, of modern music, there
is one feature of the present state of the civilized world which
separates it more widely from the Renascence, than the Renascence was
separated from the middle ages.
This distinctive character of our own times lies in the vast and
constantly increasing part which is played by natural knowledge. Not
only is our daily life shaped by it, not only does the prosperity of
millions of men depend upon it, but our whole theory of life has long
been influenced, consciously or unconsciously, by the general
conceptions of the universe, which have been forced upon us by physical
science.
In fact, the most elementary acquaintance with the results of scientific
investigation shows us that they offer a broad and striking
contradiction to the opinion so implicitly credited and taught in the
middle ages.
The notions of the beginning and the end of the world entertained by our
forefathers are no longer credible. It is very certain that the earth is
not the chief body in the material universe, and that the world is not
subordinated to man's use. It is even more certain that nature is the
expression of a definite order with which nothing interferes, and that
the chief business of mankind is to learn that order and govern
themselves accordingly. Moreover this scientific "criticism of life"
presents itself to us with different credentials from any other. It
appeals not to authority, nor to what anybody may have thought or said,
but to nature. It admits that all our interpretations of natural fact
are more or less imperfect and symbolic, and bids the learner seek for
truth not among words but among things. It warns us that the assertion
which outstrips evidence is not only a blunder but a crime.
The purely classical education advocated by the representatives of the
Humanists in our day, gives no inkling of all this. A man may be a
better scholar than Erasmus, and know no more of the chief causes of the
present intellectual fermentation than Erasmus did. Scholarly and pious
persons, worthy of all respect, favour us with allocutions upon the
sadness of the antagonism of science to their mediæval way of thinking,
which betray an ignorance of the first principles of scientific
investigation, an incapacity for understanding what a man of science
means by veracity, and an unconsciousness of the weight of established
scientific truths, which is almost comical.
There is no great force in the _tu quoque_ [thou too] argument, or else
the advocates of scientific education might fairly enough retort upon
the modern Humanists that they may be learned specialists, but that they
possess no such sound foundation for a criticism of life as deserves the
name of culture. And, indeed, if we were disposed to be cruel, we might
urge that the Humanists have brought this reproach upon themselves, not
because they are too full of the spirit of the ancient Greek, but
because they lack it.
The period of the Renascence is commonly called that of the "Revival of
Letters," as if the influences then brought to bear upon the mind of
Western Europe had been wholly exhausted in the field of literature. I
think it is very commonly forgotten that the revival of science,
effected by the same agency, although less conspicuous, was not less
momentous.
In fact, the few and scattered students of nature of that day picked up
the clue to her secrets exactly as it fell from the hands of the Greeks
a thousand years before. The foundations of mathematics were so well
laid by them, that our children learn their geometry from a book written
for the schools of Alexandria two thousand years ago. Modern astronomy
is the natural continuation and development of the work of Hipparchus
and of Ptolemy; modern physics of that of Democritus and of Archimedes.
It was long before modern biological science outgrew the knowledge
bequeathed to us by Aristotle, by Theophrastus, and by Galen.
We cannot know all the best thoughts and sayings of the Greeks unless we
know what they thought about natural phenomena. We cannot fully
apprehend their criticism of life unless we understand the extent to
which that criticism was affected by scientific conceptions. We falsely
pretend to be the inheritors of their culture, unless we are penetrated,
as the best minds among them were, with an unhesitating faith that the
free employment of reason, in accordance with scientific methods, is the
sole method of reaching truth.
Thus I venture to think that the pretensions of our modern Humanists to
the possession of the monopoly of culture and to the exclusive
inheritance of the spirit of antiquity must be abated, if not abandoned.
But I should be very sorry that anything I have said should be taken to
imply a desire on my part to depreciate the value of classical
education, as it might be and as it sometimes is. The native capacities
of mankind vary no less than their opportunities; and while culture is
one, the road by which one man may best reach it is widely different
from that which is most advantageous to another. Again, while scientific
education is yet inchoate and tentative, classical education is
thoroughly well organized upon the practical experience of generations
of teachers.
I am the last person to question the importance of genuine literary
education, or to suppose that intellectual culture can be complete
without it. An exclusively scientific training will bring about a mental
twist as surely as an exclusively literary training. The value of the
cargo does not compensate for a ship's being out of trim; and I should
be very sorry to think that the Scientific College would turn out none
but lop-sided men.
There is no need, however, that such a catastrophe should happen.
Instruction in English, French, and German is provided, and thus the
three greatest literatures of the modern world are made accessible to
the student.
French and German, and especially the latter language, are absolutely
indispensable to those who desire full knowledge in any department of
science. But even supposing that the knowledge of these languages
acquired is not more than sufficient for purely scientific purposes,
every Englishman has, in his native tongue, an almost perfect instrument
of literary expression; and, in his own literature, models of every kind
of literary excellence. If an Englishman cannot get literary culture out
of his Bible, his Shakespeare, his Milton, neither, in my belief, will
the profoundest study of Homer and Sophocles, Virgil and Horace, give it
to him.
Thus, since the constitution of the College makes sufficient provision
for literary as well as for scientific education, and since artistic
instruction is also contemplated, it seems to me that a fairly complete
culture is offered to all who are willing to take advantage of it.
But I am not sure that at this point the "practical" man, scotched but
not slain, may ask what all this talk about culture has to do with an
Institution, the object of which is defined to be "to promote the
prosperity of the manufactures and the industry of the country." He may
suggest that what is wanted for this end is not culture, nor even a
purely scientific discipline, but simply a knowledge of applied science.
I often wish that this phrase, "applied science," had never been
invented. For it suggests that there is a sort of scientific knowledge
of direct practical use, which can be studied apart from another sort of
scientific knowledge, which is of no practical utility, and which is
termed "pure science." But there is no more complete fallacy than this.
What people call applied science is nothing but the application of pure
science to particular classes of problems. It consists of deductions
from those general principles, established by reasoning and observation,
which constitute pure science. No one can safely make these deductions
until he has a firm grasp of the principles; and he can obtain that
grasp only by personal experience of the operations of observation and
of reasoning on which they are founded.
Almost all the processes employed in the arts and manufactures fall
within the range either of physics or of chemistry. In order to improve
them, one must thoroughly understand them; and no one has a chance of
really understanding them, unless he has obtained that mastery of
principles and that habit of dealing with facts, which is given by
long-continued and well-directed purely scientific training in the
physical and the chemical laboratory. So that there really is no
question as to the necessity of purely scientific discipline, even if
the work of the College were limited by the narrowest interpretation of
its stated aims.
And, as to the desirableness of a wider culture than that yielded by
science alone, it is to be recollected that the improvement of
manufacturing processes is only one of the conditions which contribute
to the prosperity of industry. Industry is a means and not an end; and
mankind work only to get something which they want. What that something
is depends partly on their innate, and partly on their acquired,
desires.
If the wealth resulting from prosperous industry is to be spent upon the
gratification of unworthy desires, if the increasing perfection of
manufacturing processes is to be accompanied by an increasing debasement
of those who carry them on, I do not see the good of industry and
prosperity.
Now it is perfectly true that men's views of what is desirable depend
upon their characters; and that the innate proclivities to which we give
that name are not touched by any amount of instruction. But it does not
follow that even mere intellectual education may not, to an indefinite
extent, modify the practical manifestation of the characters of men in
their actions, by supplying them with motives unknown to the ignorant. A
pleasure-loving character will have pleasure of some sort; but, if you
give him the choice, he may prefer pleasures which do not degrade him to
those which do. And this choice is offered to every man, who possesses
in literary or artistic culture a never-failing source of pleasures,
which are neither withered by age, nor staled by custom, nor embittered
in the recollection by the pangs of self-reproach.
If the Institution opened to-day fulfils the intention of its founder,
the picked intelligences among all classes of the population of this
district will pass through it. No child born in Birmingham,
henceforward, if he have the capacity to profit by the opportunities
offered to him, first in the primary and other schools, and afterwards
in the Scientific College, need fail to obtain, not merely the
instruction, but the culture most appropriate to the conditions of his
life.
Within these walls, the future employer and the future artisan may
sojourn together for a while, and carry, through all their lives, the
stamp of the influences then brought to bear upon them. Hence, it is not
beside the mark to remind you that the prosperity of industry depends
not merely upon the improvement of manufacturing processes, not merely
upon the ennobling of the individual character, but upon a third
condition, namely, a clear understanding of the conditions of social
life, on the part of both the capitalist and the operative, and their
agreement upon common principles of social action. They must learn that
social phenomena are as much the expression of natural laws as any
others; that no social arrangements can be permanent unless they
harmonize with the requirements of social statics and dynamics; and
that, in the nature of things, there is an arbiter whose decisions
execute themselves.