Scientific Worthies

Abstract

The awakening desire for scientific instruction, ever finding new expression among the educated classes of all European countries, we must consider not merely as a striving after new forms of amusement, or a mere empty and barren curiosity; it is rather a well-justified intellectual necessity, ai.d is in close connection with the most important springs of mental development in these times. The natural sciences have become a powerful influence in the formation of the social, industrial, and political life of civilised nations, not only from the fact that the great forces of nature have been subordinated to the aims of man, and have supplied him with a host of new means to attain them; though this mode of their action is sufficiently important that the statesman, the historian, and the philosopher, as well as the manufacturer and the merchant, cannot pass without participation in, at least, the practical results; but because there is another form of their action which goes much deeper and further, though it is, perhaps, more slow in manifesting itself; I mean their influence in the direction of the intellectual progress of humanity. It has often been said, and even brought as a charge against the natural sciences, that, through them, a schism (zwiesfialf), formerly unknown, has been introduced into modern education. And, indeed, there is truth in this. A schism is perceptible; yet such must mark every new step of intellectual development wherever the New has become a power, and the question to be settled is, the definition of its just claims, as against the just claims of the Old. The past progress of education of civilised nations has had its central point in the study of language. Language is the great instrument through possession of which man is most distinctly separated from the lower animals; through use of which he is able to share the experience and knowledge of other individuals of his time, as also those of past generations; without which each man would, like the lower animals, be limited to his instinct and to his own particular experience. That therefore the improvement of language was formerly the first and most necessary work of a growing race, and that the most refined perfection of its comprehension and its use is, and must ever be, the primary problem in the education of each individual, is undoubted. The culture of modern European nations has a peculiarly intimate connection with the study of the remains of antiquity; and thereby, directly with the study of language. With the latter study was associated that of the forms of thought, which are coined in speech; logic and grammar, that is, according to the original meaning of the words, the art of speaking and the art of writing, both taken in the highest sense, have therefore been hitherto the natural hinge points of mental education