I once mentioned in a school report, how a young man in one of our English training colleges having to paraphrase the passage in Macbeth beginning,

Can'st thou not minister to a mind diseased?

turned this line into, "Can you not wait upon the lunatic?" And I remarked what a curious state of things it would be, if every pupil of our national schools knew, let us say, that the moon is two thousand one hundred and sixty miles in diameter, and thought at the same time that a good paraphrase for

Can'st thou not minister to a mind diseased?

was, "Can you not wait upon the lunatic?" If one is driven to choose, I think I would rather have a young person ignorant about the moon's diameter, but aware that "Can you not wait upon the lunatic?" is bad, than a young person whose education had been such as to manage things the other way.

Or to go higher than the pupils of our national schools. I have in my mind's eye a member of our British Parliament who comes to travel here in America, who afterwards relates his travels, and who shows a really masterly knowledge of the geology of this great country and of its mining capabilities, but who ends by gravely suggesting that the United States should borrow a prince from our Royal Family, and should make him their king, and should create a House of Lords of great landed proprietors after the pattern of ours; and then America, he thinks, would have her future happily and perfectly secured. Surely, in this case, the President of the Section for Mechanical Science would himself hardly say that our member of Parliament, by concentrating himself upon geology and mineralogy, and so on, and not attending to literature and history, had "chosen the more useful alternative."

If then there is to be separation and option between humane letters on the one hand, and the natural sciences on the other, the great majority of mankind, all who have not exceptional and overpowering aptitudes for the study of nature, would do

well, I cannot but think, to choose to be educated in humane letters rather than in the natural sciences. Letters will call out their being at more points, will make them live more.

I said that before I ended I would just touch on the question of classical education, and I will keep my word. Even if literature is to retain a large place in our education, yet Latin and Greek, say the friends of progress, will certainly have to go. Greek is the grand offender in the eyes of these gentlemen. The attackers of the established course of study think that against Greek, at any rate, they have irresistible arguments. Literature may perhaps be needed in education, they say; but why on earth should it be Greek literature? Why not French or German? Nay, "has not an Englishman models in his own literature of every kind of excellence?" As before, it is not on any weak pleadings of my own that I rely for convincing the gainsayers; it is on the constitution of human nature itself, and on the instinct of self-preservation in humanity. The instinct for beauty is set in human nature, as surely as the instinct for knowledge is set there, or the instinct for conduct. If the instinct for beauty is served by Greek literature and art as it is served by no other literature and art, we may trust to the instinct of self-preservation in humanity for keeping Greek as part of our culture. We may trust to it for even making the study of Greek more prevalent than it is now. Greek will come, I hope, some day to be studied more rationally than at present; but it will be increasingly studied as men increasingly feel the need in them for beauty, and how powerfully Greek art and Greek literature can serve this need. Women will again study Greek, as Lady Jane Grey did; I believe that in that chain of forts, with which the fair host of the Amazons are now engirdling our English universities, I find that here in America, in colleges like Smith College in Massachusetts, and Vassar College in the State of New York, and in the happy families of the mixed universities out West, they are studying it already.

Defuit una mihi symmetria prisca,-"The antique symmetry was the one thing wanting to me," said Leonardo da

Vinci; and he was an Italian. I will not presume to speak for the Americans, but I am sure that, in the Englishman, the want of this admirable symmetry of the Greeks is a thousand times more great and crying than in any Italian. The results of the want show themselves most glaringly, perhaps, in our architecture, but they show themselves, also, in all our art. Fit details strictly combined, in view of a large general result nobly conceived; that is just the beautiful symmetria prisca of the Greeks, and it is just where we English fail, where all our art fails. Striking ideas we have, and well-executed details we have; but that high symmetry which, with satisfying and delightful effect, combines them, we seldom or never have. The glorious beauty of the Acropolis at Athens did not come from single fine things stuck about on that hill, a statue here, a gateway there,—no, it arose from all things being perfectly combined for a supreme total effect. What must not an Englishman feel about our deficiencies in this respect, as the sense for beauty, whereof this symmetry is an essential element, awakens and strengthens within him! what will not one day be his respect and desire for Greece and its symmetria prisca, when the scales drop from his eyes as he walks the London streets, and he sees such a lesson in meanness as the Strand, for instance, in its true deformity! But here we are coming to our friend Mr. Ruskin's province, and I will not intrude upon it, for he is its very sufficient guardian.

And so we at last find, it seems, we find flowing in favor of the humanities the natural and necessary stream of things, which seemed against them when we started. The "hairy quadruped furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably arboreal in his habits," this good fellow carried hidden in his nature, apparently, something destined to develop into a necessity for humane letters. Nay, more; we seem finally to be even led to the further conclusion that our hairy ancestor carried in his nature, also, a necessity for Greek.

And therefore, to say the truth, I cannot really think that humane letters are in much actual danger of being thrust out from their leading place in education, in spite of the array of

authorities against them at this moment. So long as human nature is what it is, their attractions will remain irresistible. As with Greek so with letters generally: they will some day come, we may hope, to be studied more rationally, but they will not lose their place. What will happen will rather be that there will be crowded into education other matters besides, far too many; there will be, perhaps, a period of unsettlement and confusion and false tendency; but letters will not in the end lose their leading place. If they lose it for a time, they will get it back again. We shall be brought back to them by our wants and aspirations. And a poor humanist may possess his soul in patience, neither strive nor cry, admit the energy and brilliancy of the partisans of physical science, and their present favor with the public, to be far greater than his own, and still have a happy faith that the nature of things works silently on behalf of the studies which he loves, and that, while we shall all have to acquaint ourselves with the great results reached by modern science, and to give ourselves as much training in its disciplines as we can conveniently carry, yet the majority of men will always require humane letters; and so much the more, as they have the more and the greater results of science to relate to the need in man for conduct, and to the need in him for beauty.

TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION AND PRACTICE IN WRITING

1. Explain clearly what Arnold thinks is the value of the study of literature. 2. Discuss how far belief in the special efficacy of science or of literature in education may be a matter of temperament. Possibly Arnold and Huxley might be used as typical cases. 3. Set forth Arnold's definition of culture. See his essay, "Sweetness and Light," in Culture and Anarchy for further elaboration of this rather famous definition. 4. How well has Arnold succeeded in uniting literature and science by his statement, "all learning is scientific which is systematically laid out and followed up to its original sources" (page 100)? 5. How far may Arnold's definition of literature as "all knowledge that reaches us through books" be accepted? 6. Endeavor to explain in simple fashion what is the meaning of each

of the four powers which Arnold indicates as going into the building up of human life. 7. Set forth Arnold's grounds for his staunch belief in the classical literatures. If his position does not appeal to you, give your criticism of it.

THE FUNCTION OF ART!

JOHN CAIRD

[John Caird (1820-1898) was a distinguished Scotch divine and philosopher. From 1873 to the close of his life he was vice-chancellor and principal of the University of Glasgow. It was his custom to deliver at the opening of each session of the University an address on some subject connected with the studies of the University, or on the work of some great author-philosopher or theologian, scientific or literary man-who might be regarded as representative of one of these studies. The selection here given is a portion of one of these addresses, entitled The Study of Art.]

It would seem at first sight that an inquiry into the uses of art involves a contradiction in terms. What we seek in a work of art is not instruction or information, not material or other advantages, but simply pleasure or enjoyment. Music, painting, poetry, and the other fine arts, whatever they do for the embellishment or decoration of human life, obviously contribute nothing to the supply of its practical necessities. They may form the luxury of idleness or the innocent pastime of our hours of leisure, but in themselves they have no moral purpose or practical utility; and whenever pleasure clashes with profit, they may even become noxious-diverting, as they do, time and thought from the serious work or sterner tasks of life.

Moreover, the view of the function of art relegates it to the province of the ornamental as distinguished from the useful, seems to be sanctioned not merely by popular thought, but also by philosophic theory. Among those who speculate on the subject the accepted theory seems to be that which is embodied in the phrase, "Art for art's sake," meaning by

1 Reprinted by permission from University Addresses, James MacLehose and Sons.