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Title: The Old Humanities and the New Science
Author: Osler, William
Language: English
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THE OLD HUMANITIES AND
THE NEW SCIENCE
. .
.
PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS
TO THE CLASSICAL ASSOCIATION
MAY 16, 1919
[Illustration]
THE OLD HUMANITIES
AND THE NEW SCIENCE
BY
SIR WILLIAM OSLER, BT., M.D., F.R.S.
WITH INTRODUCTION BY
HARVEY CUSHING, M.D.
[Illustration]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
_The Riverside Press Cambridge_
1920
COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
INTRODUCTION
IN writing a prefatory note to an American reprint of this notable
address there are three things to consider--the writer, his subject, and
the occasion. The greatly beloved author had a multitude of friends in
all lands, and far abler pens have written much concerning him during
the past twelve months. The subject is one of no less moment on this
side of the Atlantic than to those in older countries who concern
themselves with scholarship and education, though here the classicists
are having a particularly hard struggle to retain in our academies,
schools, and colleges a proper footing for the ancient languages and
learning termed "the humanities." The circumstances under which the
address was given are less familiar in this country than the author and
his subject, for we as yet have no corresponding organization, or at
least none with such an ambitious programme. Consequently it is
appropriate that this note should dwell chiefly upon the occasion.
The Classical Association, composed of a large body of university men,
teachers, and schoolmasters, with local branches in several places in
Great Britain and her colonies, was established in 1904 with this
object:
To promote the development and maintain the well-being of
classical studies and in particular:
(a) To impress upon public opinion the claim of such studies to
an eminent place in the national scheme of education;
(b) To improve the practice of classical teaching by free
discussion of its scope and methods;
(c) To encourage investigation and call attention to new
discoveries;
(d) To create opportunities for friendly intercourse and
co-operation among all lovers of classical learning in this
country.
That Sir William Osler should have been chosen to preside over such an
assembly of British scholars is no matter for surprise, for though a
humanist in the broad sense of the term as a student of human affairs
and human nature, rather than of Latin and Greek, he at the same time
was a wide reader with a "relish for knowledge," successful not only in
its quest in many fields beyond that of his chosen profession, but
particularly so in his ability to hand his literary gleanings on to
others in a new and attractive form. Nevertheless, the presidency of the
Classical Association, considering the avowed objects of this body, was
a most signal honour in view of his reputation primarily as a scientist
and teacher of medicine.
His immediate predecessor, the Professor of Greek at Christ Church,
opened his presidential address of the year before with these words:
It is the general custom of this Association to choose as its
President alternately a classical scholar and a man of wide
eminence outside the classics. Next year you are to have a man
of science, a great physician who is also famous in the world of
learning and literature. Last year you had a statesman, who,
though a statesman, is also a great scholar and man of letters,
a sage and counsellor in the antique mould, of world-wide fame
and unique influence.
Thus, though in himself sufficiently representative of humanistic
culture, Osler was in this strict sense an alternate, and among the
fourteen earlier Presidents of the Association three had like himself
been Fellows of the Royal Society, which long since had abandoned even
the pretence of concerning itself with classical studies which had been
the very basis of the Revival of Learning.
The list of Presidents since the foundation of the Association may be a
matter of interest to those in this country who may not have been aware
of the existence and purposes of this organization of British scholars:
1904. The Right Hon. Sir R. H. Collins, M.A., LL.D., D.C.L.,
Master of the Rolls.
1905. The Right Hon. the Earl of Halsbury, D.C.L., F.R.S., Lord
Chancellor.
1906. The Right Hon. Lord Curzon of Kedleston, G.C.S.I.,
G.C.I.E., D.C.L., F.R.S.
1907. S. H. Butcher, Esq., M.P., Litt.D., D.Litt., LL.D.
1908. The Right Hon. H. H. Asquith, M.P., K.C., D.C.L., Prime
Minister.
1909. The Right Hon. the Earl of Cromer, G.C.B., O.M., K.C.S.I.,
LL.D.
1910. Sir Archibald Geikie, K.C.B., D.C.L., LL.D., Ph.D.,
President of the Royal Society.
1911. The Right Rev. Edward Lee Hicks, D.D., Lord Bishop of
Lincoln.
1912. The Very Rev. Henry Montagu Butler, D.D., D.C.L., LL.D.,
Master of Trinity College, Cambridge.
1913. Sir Frederic G. Kenyon, K.C.B., D.Litt., F.B.A., Head of
the British Museum.
1914. Professor William Ridgeway, Litt.D., LL.D., Sc.D., F.B.A.,
Disney Professor of Archæology, Cambridge.
1915. Sir W. B. Richmond, K.C.B., R.A., D.C.L.
1916. The Right Hon. Viscount Bryce, O.M., D.C.L., LL.D.,
P.B.A., F.R.S.
1917. Professor Gilbert Murray, LL.D., D.Litt., F.B.A.,
F.R.S.L., Christ Church, Oxford.
As reported in the Annual Proceedings of the Association, Professor
Murray at the meeting in 1918, in nominating his successor, spoke of him
as a man, "who is not only one of the most eminent physicians in the
world, but represents in a peculiar way the learned physician who was
one of the marked characters of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, and stands for a type of culture which the Classical
Association does not wish to see die out of the world--the culture of a
man who, while devoting himself to his special science, keeps
nevertheless a broad basis of interest in letters of all kinds."
In seconding this proposal, Sir Frederic Kenyon pointed out that it had
come at a very appropriate time in the work of the Association, for:
"During this last year our main activity has been directed towards
getting representatives of Natural Science and of the Humanities to work
together, on the principle that those subjects never should be in
conflict with one another, but merely in friendly competition. Both are
equally essential for a liberal education. It is a continuation and a
symbol of that policy that we should ask Sir William Osler to become our
President, and that he should have accepted cordially and readily, as he
did. He is eminent as a man of science, is President of the
Bibliographical Society, and represents scholarship in medicine in its
best form."
It is quite possible that these last remarks may have suggested to the
succeeding President an appropriate topic for his address, for he told
the writer a few months later that he planned to talk on Science and the
Humanities. He was already turning the matter over in his mind, but
where he found time or inclination to write the address it is difficult
to imagine.
Staggered by the loss of his son, an only child, who had fallen in
action near St. Julien during the Passchendaele battles in September the
year before, his days occupied with a succession of duties in connection
with the war, his household filled as always with friends and visitors
innumerable, and every young American or Canadian in service in England
gravitating there, eager above all things to further the progress of the
elaborate catalogue of his unique and valuable collection of books, he
nevertheless set himself to prepare this, one of his most brilliant and
what proved to be his last formal address.
The meeting of the Association was to be held in Oxford, the bed-rock of
classical learning--the only place, it seems, where the word "humanism"
in its narrow sense still survives in modern university terminology as
that part of the curriculum known as _Litteræ Humaniores_. As was
characteristic of his methods, the mere address itself did not suffice,
but he prepared for the occasion in other ways. Thus he collected from
the various Oxford colleges and placed on exhibition an array of
historical objects illustrating the important part Oxford had once
played in science and natural philosophy in days antedating the Royal
Society which had its seeds of origin there. In addition, and as a
possible offset to this, he exhibited from his own collection of books
those volumes which constituted in their original editions the
outstanding classics in Science and Medicine. A small pamphlet
concerning them reads as follows:
Faced with a bewildering variety and ever-increasing literature,
how is the hard-pressed student to learn--
1. The evolution of knowledge in any subject;
2. The life and work of the men who made the original
contributions?
So far as concerns Science and Medicine, an attempt is
made to answer the question by the collection of a
Bibliotheca Prima, examples from which are here shown. The
idea is to have in a comparatively small number of works the
essential literature grouped about the men of the first rank,
arranged in chronological order.
I have put out the _editiones principes_ of twenty of such
works. The fundamental contribution may be represented
by a great Aldine edition, _e.g._ Aristotle, by the brief
communication such as that of Darwin and Wallace in the
Proceedings of the Linnean Society, 1858, or by a three-page
pamphlet of Roentgen. From the card lists of Galen, Hippocrates,
Vesalius, and Harvey, those interested will see the aim and
scope of the collection.
The works on exhibition are:
Plato 1513
Hippocrates 1526
Aristotle 1495-98
Theophrastus 1483
Galen 1525
Dioscorides 1499
Celsus 1478
Plotinus 1492
Rhazes 1476
Avicenna 1486 (not ed. pr.)
Averrhoes 1473
Copernicus 1543
Vesalius 1543
Agricola 1556
Gilbert 1600
Bacon 1620
Galileo 1632
Harvey 1628
Descartes 1637
Newton 1687
Though it is hardly pertinent to this introductory note, the temptation
is strong to dwell further on the treasures of his library. These
mentioned above were but samples from the Bibliotheca Prima, and the
superb collection, with copious notes on each separate item, is further
subdivided into some seven sections--Bibliotheca Secunda, historica,
biographica, literaria, the incunabulas, and so on.
He was for seven years President of the Bibliographical Society and as
great a lover of books as of men, but it should be borne in mind that
his library was being collected and catalogued, not as a series of
treasures by reason of their rarity, but were regarded as instruments
for the advancement of knowledge, and with this end in view the
collection was bequeathed to McGill University.
By good fortune, letters which give interesting descriptions of the
effect of the address have been received from two distinguished members
of Sir William's audience, one of them an eminent classical scholar, the
other an eminent scientist. Sir Frederic Kenyon writes that:
The delivery of Sir William Osler's address was a very memorable
occasion. As can be seen by those who read it, it was full of
learning, of humour, of feeling, of eloquence, and it contained
suggestions of real weight with regard to the interconnection of
science and the humanities. But it gained much in delivery from
the personality of the speaker. No one could hear it without
being impressed by his width of outlook, by his easy mastery of
great tracts of literature and learning, by his all-embracing
humanity in the widest sense of the term. I hope it made many
students of science anxious to extend their knowledge of
classical literature; I know it made one student of the classics
wish that he had a wider knowledge of natural science. Osler
himself was a well-nigh perfect example of the union of science
and the humanities, which to some of us is the ideal of
educational progress; and his address embodied the whole spirit
of this ideal.
Professor William H. Welch has given the following account:
Most fortunately for me my last visit to the Oslers' in Oxford
happened to be on Friday, May 16, 1919, when Osler delivered his
presidential address before the Classical Association.
Of the many honours which came to Osler few gave him so great
pleasure, as well as surprise, as his election to the presidency
of the British Classical Association. This was a recognition,
not merely of his sympathetic interest in classical studies and
intimate association with classical scholars, but also of his
mastery of certain phases of the subject, especially the
bibliographical and historical sides, and the relation of the
work and thought of classical antiquity to the development of
medicine, science, and culture. There have been physicians,
especially in England, well known for their attainments as
classical scholars, but I am not aware that since Linacre there
has come to a member of the medical profession distinction in
this field comparable to Osler's election to the presidency of
the British Classical Association.
Osler told me that he had never given so much time and thought
to the preparation of an address as he did to this one.
The occasion and the whole setting were to me most interesting
and impressive. At noon the audience of distinguished scholars
and guests assembled in the "Divinity Room," the most
beautiful assembly room in Oxford. At one end of the hall the
Vice-Chancellor of the University presided and halfway down one
of the sides was the high seat of the orator. The distinguished
company, the brightly coloured academic gowns and hoods, the
traditional ceremonies for such an occasion in Oxford, the
figure of Osler himself, the charm and interest of the address
and its cordial appreciation and reception by the audience, all
combined to make a scene of brilliancy and delight which I shall
always carry in my memory.
At the close of the address the vote of thanks was moved by Sir
Herbert Warren, the President of Magdalen College, who described
Osler as the modern Galen, and was seconded by Sir John Barran,
the member of Parliament from Leeds, in felicitous words of
discriminating praise of the President's address. The audience
responded most enthusiastically.
I shall never forget the hour which I spent with Osler just
before the address, in inspecting the wonderful collection of
scientific instruments of historical interest which Mr. Gunther
had assembled at Osler's request from the various colleges at
Oxford, especially from Merton, the old home of science. An
interesting descriptive catalogue of the collection had been
prepared. With what delight Osler showed me and told me the
histories and associations of the astrolabes, armillary spheres,
orreries, telescopes, lenses, microscopes, books, etc., which he
had caused to be gathered together in connection with the
meeting of the Classical Association! You will recognize a
characteristic touch and thought of Osler in arranging for such
an original exhibit to interest a meeting of scholars.
When not long after the address I said good-bye to Osler I
little thought that it was to be our final parting, but I
rejoice to have been with him then and to remember him as I saw
him last on that triumphal day.
Thus, though from first to last his heart was wrapped up in his
profession and its science, his mind was open to other things, and his
confession that the _Religio Medici_ was the second book he ever
purchased and that the particular copy had always remained at his
bedside is not without significance. He lived to prove himself, not only
a worthy disciple of those scholars of the Renascence who interested
themselves in natural philosophy, but also of those who were devotees of
the ancient languages and literature. But Sir William Osler was a man
first--a physician and scholar afterward; and beneath his high spirits,
his love of fun, lay an infinite compassion and tenderness toward his
humankind. "Write me as one who loves his fellow-men." And upon few men
has such a measure of admiration, affection, and love been bestowed in
return. These things he bore without pride, as he bore his great success
in life with humility.
On July 12, 1919, less than two months after the address was delivered,
he attained his seventieth year, and was presented with two volumes
containing sixty-seven original "Contributions to Medical and Biological
Research" written in his honour. In addition to this, tributes were
showered upon him from all sides, and his work, character, and
accomplishments became the subject of papers innumerable. It was an
extraordinary outburst, one of those exceptional occurrences when people
do not wait for the passing--in this case so near at hand--to say, what
is in their hearts to say, of the life of a friend. A brief
characterization of him from one of the most eminent of British scholars
was quoted early in this note, and it may be fitting to close with some
lines by the dean of American classical scholars, Basil L. Gildersleeve,
written for what proved to be his last birthday:
ON A PORTRAIT OF SIR WILLIAM
OSLER, BART.
William the Fowler, Guillaume l'Oiseleur!
I love to call him thus, and when I scan
The counterfeit presentment of the man,
I feel his net, I hear his arrows whir.
Make at the homely surname no demur,
Nor on a nomination lay a ban
With which a line of sovran lords began,
Henry the Fowler was first Emperor.
Asclepius was Apollo's chosen son,
But to that son he never lent his bow,
Nor did Hephæstus teach to forge his net;
Both secrets hath Imperial Osler won.
His winged words straight to their quarry go.
All hearts are holden by his meshes yet.
HARVEY CUSHING
_Brookline_
_February 18, 1920_
THE OLD HUMANITIES AND
THE NEW SCIENCE
THE OLD HUMANITIES AND
THE NEW SCIENCE
I
Early in the sixteenth century a literary joke sent inextinguishable
laughter through the learned circles of Europe. The _Epistolæ Obscurorum
Virorum_ is great literature, to which I refer for two reasons--its
standard is an exact gauge of my scholarship, and had _Magister
Nostrandus Ortuinus Gratius_ of Cologne, to whom most of the letters are
addressed, been asked to join that wicked Erfurt Circle, he could not
have been more surprised than I was to receive a gracious invitation to
preside over this gathering of British scholars. I felt to have been
sailing under false colours to have ever, by pen or tongue, suggested
the possession of even the traditional small Latin and less Greek.
Relieved by the assurance that in alternate years the qualification of
your President was an interest in education and literature, I gladly
accepted, not, however, without such anticipatory qualms as afflict an
amateur at the thought of addressing a body of experts. Not an educated
man in the Oxford sense, yet faint memories of the classics linger--the
result of ten years of such study as lads of my generation pursued,
memories best expressed in Tom Hood's lines:
"The weary tasks I used to con!
The hopeless leaves I wept upon!
Most fruitless leaves to me!"
In a life of teaching and practice, a mere picker-up of learning's
crumbs is made to realize the value of the humanities in science not
less than in general culture.
To have a Professor of Medicine in this Chair gives to the Oxford
meeting an appropriate renaissance--shall we say mediæval?--flavour, and
one may be pardoned the regret that the meeting is not being held in
May, 1519, to have had the pleasure of listening to an address from a
real Oxford scholar-physician, an early teacher of Greek in this
University, and the founder of the Royal College of Physicians, whose
_Rudimenta Grammatices_ and _De Emendata Structura Latini Sermonis_
upheld for a generation, on the Continent at least, the reputation of
English scholarship. These noble walls, themselves an audience--indeed,
most appreciative of audiences--have storied memories of Linacre's
voice, and the basis of the keen judgment of Erasmus may have been
formed by intercourse with him in this very school. In those happy days,
to know Hippocrates and Galen was to know disease and to be qualified to
practise; and my profession looks back in grateful admiration to such
great medical humanists as Linacre and Caius and Rabelais. Nor can I
claim to speak for pure science, some salt of which remains from early
association, and from a lifelong attempt to correlate with art a science
which makes medicine, I was going to say the only--but it is more civil
to say the most--progressive of the learned professions.
To have lived right through an epoch, matched only by two in the story
of the race, to have shared in its long struggle, to have witnessed its
final victory (and in my own case, to be left I trust with wit enough to
realize its significance)--to have done this has been a wonderful
privilege. To have outgrown age-old theories of man and of nature, to
have seen west separated from east in the tangled skein of human
thought, to have lived in a world re-making--these are among the thrills
and triumphs of the Victorian of my generation. To a childhood and youth
came echoes of the controversy that Aristarchus began, Copernicus
continued, and Darwin ended, that put the microcosm into line with the
macrocosm, and for the golden age of Eden substituted the _tellus dura_
of Lucretius. Think of the Cimmerian darkness out of which our
generation has, at any rate, blazed a path! Picture the mental state of
a community which could produce "Omphalos: An Attempt to untie the
Geological Knot"![1] I heard warm clerical discussions on its main
thesis, that the fossils were put into the earth's strata to test men's
faith in the Mosaic account of the creation, and our Professor of
Natural Theology lectured seriously upon it! The intellectual unrest of
those days wrapped many in that "dyvine cloude of unknowynge," by which
happy phrase Brother Herp designates mediæval mysticism; and not a bad
thing for a young man to live through, as sufficient infection usually
remains to enable him to understand, if not to sympathize with, mental
states alien or even hostile.
[1] By the distinguished naturalist Philip Henry Gosse.
An Age of Force followed the final subjugation of Nature. The dynamo
replaced the steam-engine, radiant energy revealed the hidden secrets of
matter, to the conquest of the earth was added the control of the air
and the mastery of the deep. Nor was it only an Age of Force. Never
before had man done so much for his brother, the victory over the powers
of Nature meant also glorious victories of peace; pestilences were
checked, the cry of the poor became articulate, and to help the life of
the submerged half became a sacred duty of the other. How full we were
of the pride of life! In 1910 at Edinburgh I ended an address on "Man's
Redemption of Man" with the well-known lines of Shelley beginning,
"Happiness and Science dawn though late upon the earth." And now, having
survived the greatest war in history, and a great victory, with the
wreckage of mediæval autonomy to clear up, our fears are lest we may
fail to control the fretful forces of Caliban, and our hopes are to
rebuild Jerusalem in this green and pleasant land.
Never before in its long evolution has the race realized its full
capacity. Our fathers have told us, and we ourselves have known, of
glorious sacrifices; but the past four years have exhausted in every
direction the possibilities of human effort. And, as usual, among the
nations the chief burden has fallen on that weary Titan, the Motherland,
"Bearing on shoulders immense,
Atlantean, the load
Well-nigh not to be borne
Of the too vast orb of her fate."
Not alone did she furnish the sinews of war, but she developed a spirit
that made defeat impossible.
No wonder war has advocates, to plead the heroic clash of ideals, the
purging of a nation's dross in the fire of suffering and sacrifice, and
the welding in one great purpose of a scattered people. Even Montaigne,
sanest of men, called it "the greatest and most magnificent of human
actions"; and the glamours of its pride, pomp, and circumstance still
captivate. But there are other sides which we should face without
shrinking. Why dwell on the horrors such as we doctors and nurses have
had to see? Enough to say that war blasts the soul, and in this great
conflict the finer sense of humanity has been shocked to paralysis by
the helplessness of our civilization and the futility of our religion to
stem a wave of primitive barbarism. Black as are the written and
unwritten pages of history, the concentrated and prolonged martyrdom
surpasses anything man has yet had to endure. What a shock to the proud
and mealy-mouthed Victorian who had begun to trust that Love was
creation's final law, forgetting that Egypt and Babylon are our
contemporaries and of yesterday in comparison with the hundreds of
thousands of years since the cave-dwellers left their records on walls
and bones. In the mystic shadow of the Golden Bough, and swayed by the
emotions of our savage ancestors, we stand aghast at the revelation of
the depth and ferocity of primal passions which reveal the
unchangeableness of human nature.
When the wild beast of Plato's dream becomes a waking reality, and a
herd-emotion of hate sweeps a nation off its feet, the desolation that
follows is wider than that in France and Belgium, wider even than the
desolation of grief, and something worse--the hardened heart, the lie in
the soul--so graphically described in Book II of the "Republic"--that
forces us to do accursed things, and even to defend them! I refer to it
because, as professors, we have been accused of sinning against the
light. Of course we have. Over us, too, the wave swept, but I protest
against the selection of us for special blame. The other day, in an
address on "The Comradeship of Letters" at Turin, President Wilson is
reported to have said: "It is one of the great griefs of this war that
the universities of the Central Empires used the thoughts of science to
destroy mankind; it is the duty of the universities of these states to
redeem science from this disgrace and to show that the pulse of humanity
beats in the classroom, and that there are sought out not the secrets of
death but the secrets of life." A pious and worthy wish! But once in war
a nation mobilizes every energy, and to say that science has been
prostituted in discovering means of butchery is to misunderstand the
situation. Slaughter, wholesale and unrestricted, is what is sought, and
to accomplish this the discoveries of the sainted Faraday and of the
gentle Dalton are utilized to the full, and to their several nations
scientific men render this service freely, if not gladly. That the
mental attitude engendered by science is apt to lead to a gross
materialism is a vulgar error. Scientific men, in mufti or in uniform,
are not more brutal than their fellows, and the utilization of their
discoveries in warfare should not be a greater reproach to them than is
our joyous acceptance of their success.
What a change of heart after the appalling experience of the first
gassing in 1915! Nothing more piteously horrible than the sufferings of
the victims has ever been seen in warfare.[2] Surely we could not sink
to such barbarity! Is thy servant a dog? But martial expediency soon
compelled the Allies to enlist the resources of chemistry; the
instruction of our enemies was soon bettered, and before the Armistice
there were developments in technique and destructive force that would
have delighted Nisroch, who first invented aerial "machinations to
plague the sons of men." A group of medical men representing the chief
universities and medical bodies of the United Kingdom was innocent
enough to suggest that such an unclean weapon--the use of lethal gases,
"condemning its victims to death by long-drawn-out torture," and with
infinite possibilities for its further development--should be forever
abolished. "Steeped in folly by theories and prepossessions," failure to
read the "lessons of war which should have sufficed to convince a
beetle"--such were among the newspaper comments; and in other ways we
were given to understand that our interference in such matters was most
untimely. All the same, it is gratifying to see that the suggestion has
been adopted at the Peace Congress.
[2] I am sorry to have seen Sargent's picture "Gassed" in this
year's Academy. It haunts the mind like a nightmare.
With what a howl of righteous indignation the slaughter of our innocent
women and children by the bombing of open towns was received! It was a
dirty and bloody business, worthy of the Oxydracians by means of
Levin-bolts and Thunders and more horrible, more frightful, more
diabolical, maiming, breaking, tearing, and slaying more folk and
confounding men's senses and throwing down more walls than would a
hundred thunderbolts.[3]
[3] Rabelais, Book IV, ch. LXI.
Against reprisals there was at first a strong feeling. Early in 1916 I
wrote to the "Times": "The cry for reprisals illustrates the exquisitely
hellish state of mind into which war plunges even sensible men. Not a
pacifist, but a 'last-ditcher,' yet I refuse to believe that as a
nation, how bitter soever the provocation, we shall stain our hands in
the blood of the innocent. In this matter let us be free from
bloodguiltiness, and let not the undying reproach of humanity rest on us
as on the Germans." Two years changed me into an ordinary barbarian. A
detailed tally of civilians killed by our airmen has not, I believe,
been published, but the total figures quoted are not far behind the
German.
Could a poll have been taken a week before the Armistice as to the moral
justification of the bombing of Berlin--for which we were ready--how we
should have howled at the proposer of any doubt! And many Jonahs were
displeased that a city greater than Nineveh, with more than the
threescore and ten thousand who knew not the right hand from the left,
had been spared. We may deplore the necessity and lament, as did a
certain great personage:
"... Yet public reason just--
Honour and empire with revenge enlarged
... compels me now
To do what else, though damned, I should abhor."
All the same, we considered ourselves "Christians of the best edition,
all picked and culled," and the churches remained open, prayers rose to
Jehovah, many of whose priests--even his bishops!--were in khaki, and
quit themselves like men--yes, and scores died the death of heroes! Into
such hells of inconsistency does war plunge the best of us!
Learning--new or old--seems a vain thing to save a nation, but possibly,
as a set-off, science, as represented by cellulose and sulphuric acid,
may yet prove the best bulwark of civilization! In his "History of the
Origin of Medicine,"[4] Lettsom maintains that the invention of firearms
has done more to prevent the destruction of the human species than any
other discovery; he says: "Invention and discernment of mind have made
it possible to reverse the ancient maxim that strength has always
prevailed over wisdom." Science alone may prevent a repetition of the
story of Egypt, of Babylonia, of Greece, and of Rome. The suggestion
seems brazen effrontery when we have not even given the world the
equivalent of the _Pax Romana_! Ah! what a picture of self-satisfied
happiness in Plutarch! One envies that placid life in the midst of the
only great peace the world has known, spanning a period of more than two
hundred years. And he could say, "No tumults, no civil sedition, no
tyrannies, no pestilences nor calamities depopulating Greece, no
epidemic disease needing powerful and choice drugs and medicines";
though as a Delphic priest there is a pathetic lament that the Pythian
priestess has now only commonplace questions to deal with.[5] Surely
those cultivated men of his circle must have felt that their house could
never be removed. Has Science reached such control over Nature that she
will enable our civilization to escape the law of the Ephesian, written
on all known records--_panta rei_? Perhaps so, now that material
civilization is world-wide; cataclysmic forces, powerful enough in
centres of origin, may weaken as they pass out in circles. Let this be
our hope in the present crisis. At any rate, in the free democracies in
which Demos with safety says "_L'État c'est moi_," it has yet to be
determined whether Science, as the embodiment of a mechanical force, can
rule without invoking ruin. Two things are clear: there must be a very
different civilization or there will be no civilization at all; and the
other is that neither the old religion combined with the old learning,
nor both with the new science, suffice to save a nation bent on
self-destruction. The suicide of Germany, the outstanding fact of the
war, followed an outburst of national megalomania. For she had
religion--it may shock some of you to hear! I mean the people, not the
writers or the thinkers, but the people for whom Luther lived and Huss
died. Of the two devotional ceremonies which stand supreme in my memory,
one was a service in the Dom, Berlin, in which "not the great nor well
bespoke, but the mere uncounted folk" sang Luther's great hymn "_Ein'
feste Burg ist unser Gott._"[6] With the Humanities Germany never broke,
and the proportion of students in her schools and universities who
studied Greek and Latin has been higher than in any other country. You
know better than I the innumerable classical studies of her scholars. In
classical learning relating to science and medicine she simply had the
field; for one scholar in other countries she had a dozen, and the
monopoly of journals relating to the history of these subjects. And she
had science, and led the world in the application of the products of the
laboratory to the uses of every-day life--in commerce, in the arts, and
in war. Withal, like Jeshurun, she waxed fat; and did ever such pride go
before such destruction? What a tragedy that the successors of Virchow
and Traube and Helmholtz and Billroth should have made her a byword
among the nations! "Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds!"
[4] 1778, p. 30.
[5] "Why the Pythian Priestess," etc. (Plutarch's _Morals_, vol.
III, p. 100, Goodwin's edition).
[6] And the other, how different! The crowded Blue Mosque of
Cairo, and the crowded streets with the thousands of
kneeling Moslems awaiting the cry of the muezzin from the
tower.
II
So much preliminary to the business before us, to meet changed
conditions as practical men, with the reinforcement born of hope or with
the strong resolution of despair.
For what does this Association stand? What are these classical interests
that you represent? Take a familiar simile. By a very simple trick, you
remember, did Empedocles give Menippus in the moon-halt--the first stage
of his memorable trip--such long and clear vision that he saw the tribes
of men like a nest of ants, a seething mass going to and fro at their
different tasks. Of the function of the classical members in this
myrmecic community there can be no question. Neither warriors, nor
slaves, nor neuters, you live in a well-protected social environment,
heretofore free from enemies, and have been well taken care of. I hate
to speak of you as larvæ, but as such you perform a duty of the greatest
import in this trophidium stage of your existence. Let me explain. From
earliest days much attention has been paid by naturalists to the
incredible affection "--incredible [Greek: storgê]," Swammerdam calls
it--which ants display in feeding, licking, and attending the larvæ.
Disturb a nest, and the chief care is to take them to a place of safety.
This attention is what our symphilic community--to use a biological
term--bestows on you. So intensely altruistic, apparently, is this
behaviour, that for the very word "[Greek: storgê]," which expresses the
tenderest of all feelings, there is a difficulty in finding an
equivalent; indeed, Gilbert White used it almost as an English word. The
truth is really very different.
It has been shown that the nursing function--or instinct--is really
trophallactic. In the case of the ant the nurse places the larva on its
back, and the broad ventral surface serves as a trough for the food,
often predigested. The skill and devotion with which this is done are
among the wonders in the life of the insect to which moralists have
never tired of urging a visit. But listen to the sequel! The larva is
provided with a pair of rich honey-bags in the shape of salivary glands,
big exudatoria from which is discharged an ambrosia greedily lapped up
by the nurse, who with this considers herself well paid for her care. In
the same manner, when the assiduous V.A.D. wasp distributes food to the
larvæ, the heads of which eagerly protrude from their cells, she must be
paid by a draught of nectar from their exudatoria, while if it is not
forthcoming the wasp seizes the head of the larva in her mandibles and
jams it back into its cell and compels it to pay up. The lazy males will
play the same game and even steal the much-sought liquid without any
compensatory gift of nourishment.[7]
[7] Professor Wheeler in _Proceedings of Amer. Phil. Soc._, vol.
LVII, no. 4, 1918.
What does the community at large, so careful of your comforts, expect
from you? Surely the honey-dew and the milk of paradise secreted from
your classical exudatoria, which we lap up greedily in recensions,
monographs, commentaries, histories, translations, and brochures. Among
academic larvæ you have for centuries absorbed the almost undivided
interest of the nest, and not without reason, for the very life of the
workers depends on the hormones you secrete. Though small in number,
your group has an enormous kinetic value, like our endocrine organs. For
man's body, too, is a humming hive of working cells, each with its
specific function, all under central control of the brain and heart, and
all dependent on materials called hormones (secreted by small, even
insignificant-looking structures) which lubricate the wheels of life.
For example, remove the thyroid gland just below the Adam's apple, and
you deprive man of the lubricants which enable his thought-engines to
work--it is as if you cut off the oil-supply of a motor--and gradually
the stored acquisitions of his mind cease to be available, and within a
year he sinks into dementia. The normal processes of the skin cease,
the hair falls, the features bloat, and the paragon of animals is
transformed into a shapeless caricature of humanity. These essential
lubricators, of which a number are now known, are called hormones--you
will recognize from its derivation how appropriate is the term.
Now, the men of your guild secrete materials which do for society at
large what the thyroid gland does for the individual. The Humanities are
the hormones. Our friend Mr. P. S. Allen read before this Association a
most suggestive paper on the historical evolution of the word
"Humanism." I like to think of the pleasant-flavoured word as embracing
all the knowledge of the ancient classical world--what man knew of
nature as well as what he knew of himself. Let us see what this
university means by the _Literæ Humaniores_. The "Greats" papers for the
past decade make interesting study. With singular uniformity there is
diversity enough to bear high tribute to the ingenuity of the examiners.
But, comparing the subjects in 1918 with those in the first printed
papers of the school in 1831, one is surprised to find them the
same--practically no change in the eighty-seven years! Compare them,
again, with the subjects given in John Napleton's "Considerations" in
1773--no change! and with the help of Rashdall we may trace the story of
the studies in arts, only to find that as far back as 1267, with
different names sometimes, they have been through all the centuries
essentially the same--Greek and Latin authors, logic, rhetoric, grammar,
and the philosophies, natural, moral, and metaphysical--practically the
seven liberal arts for which, as you may see by the names over the
doors, Bodley's building provided accommodation. Why this invariableness
in an ever-turning world? One of the marvels, so commonplace that it has
ceased to be marvellous, is the deep rooting of our civilization in the
soil of Greece and Rome--much of our dogmatic religion, practically all
the philosophies, the models of our literature, the ideals of our
democratic freedom, the fine and the technical arts, the fundamentals of
science, and the basis of our law. The Humanities bring the student into
contact with the master minds who gave us these things--with the dead
who never die, with those immortal lives "not of now nor of yesterday,
but which always were."
As true to-day as in the fifth century B.C. the name of Hellas stands no
longer for the name of a race, but as the name of knowledge; or, as more
tersely put by Maine, "Except the blind forces of Nature, nothing moves
[intellectually, he means] in this world that is not Greek in origin."
Man's anabasis from the old priest-ridden civilizations of the East
began when "the light of reason lighted up all things," with which
saying Anaxagoras expressed our modern outlook on life.
The Humanities have been a subject of criticism in two directions. Their
overwhelming prominence, it is claimed, prevents the development of
learning in other and more useful directions; and the method of teaching
is said to be antiquated and out of touch with the present needs. They
control the academic life of Oxford. An analysis of the Register for
1919 shows that of the 257 men comprising the Heads and Fellows of the
twenty-three colleges (including St. Edmund's Hall), only fifty-one are
scientific, including the mathematicians.
It is not very polite, perhaps, to suggest that as transmitters and
interpreters they should not bulk quite so large in a modern university.
'Twas all very well
"... in days when wits were fresh and clear
And life ran gaily as the sparkling Thames--"
in those happy days when it was felt that all knowledge had been
garnered by those divine men of old time, that there was nothing left
but to enjoy the good things harvested by such universal providers as
Isidore, Rabanus Maurus, and Vincent of Beauvais, and those stronger
dishes served by such artists as Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas
Aquinas--delicious blends of such skill that only the palate of an
Apicius could separate Greek, Patristic, and Arabian savours.
It is not the dominance, but the unequal dominance that is a cause of
just complaint. As to methods of teaching--by their fruits ye shall know
them. The product of "Greats" needs no description in this place. Many
deny the art to find the mind's construction in the face, but surely not
the possibility of diagnosing at a glance a "first in Greats"! Only in
him is seen that altogether superior expression, that self-consciousness
of having reached life's goal, of having, in that pickled sentence of
Dean Gaisford's Christmas sermon, done something "that not only elevates
above the common herd, but leads not unfrequently to positions of
considerable emolument." "Many are the wand-bearers, few are the
mystics," and a system should not be judged by the exceptions. As a
discipline of the mind for the few, the system should not be touched,
and we should be ready to sacrifice a holocaust of undergraduates every
year to produce in each generation a scholar of the type of, say, Ingram
Bywater. 'Tis Nature's method--does it not cost some thousands of eggs
and fry to produce one salmon?
But the average man, not of scholar timber, may bring one railing
accusation against his school and college. Apart from mental discipline,
the value of the ancient languages is to give a key to their
literatures. Yet we make boys and young men spend ten or more years on
the study of Greek and Latin, at the end of which time the beauties of
the languages are still hidden because of the pernicious method in which
they are taught. It passes my understanding how the more excellent way
of Montaigne, of Milton, and of Locke should have been neglected until
recently. Make the language an instrument to play with and to play with
thoroughly, and recognize that except for the few in "Mods." and
"Greats" it is superfluous to know how the instrument is constructed, or
to dissect the neuro-muscular mechanism by which it is played. It is
satisfactory to read that the Greek Curriculum Committee thinks "it is
possible in a comparatively short time to acquire a really valuable
knowledge of Greek, and to learn to read with accuracy and fair fluency
some of the most important works in Greek literature." I am sure of it,
if the teacher will go to school to Montaigne and feed fat against that
old scoundrel Protagoras a well-earned grudge for inventing
grammar--_pace_ Mr. Livingstone, every chapter in whose two books appeal
to me, except those on grammar, against which I have a medullary
prejudice. I speak, of course, as a fool among the wise, and I am not
pleading for the "Greats" men, but for the average man, whom to infect
with the spirit of the Humanities is the greatest single gift in
education. To you of the elect this is pure _camouflage_--the amateur
talking to the experts; but there is another side upon which I feel
something may be said by one whose best friends have been the old
Humanists, and whose breviary is Plutarch, or rather Plutarch gallicized
by Montaigne. Paraphrasing Mark Twain's comment upon Christian Science,
the so-called Humanists have not enough Science, and Science sadly lacks
the Humanities. This unhappy divorce, which should never have taken
place, has been officially recognized in the two reports edited by Sir
Frederic Kenyon,[8] which have stirred the pool, and cannot but be
helpful. To have got constructive, anabolic action from representatives
of interests so diverse is most encouraging. While all agree that
neither in the public schools nor in the older universities are the
conditions at present in keeping with the urgent scientific needs of the
nation, the specific is not to be sought in endowments alone, but in the
leaven which may work a much-needed change in both branches of
knowledge.
[8] _Education, Scientific and Humane_ (1917), and _Education,
Secondary and University_ (1919).
III
The School of _Literæ Humaniores_ excites wonder in the extent and
variety of the knowledge demanded, and there is everywhere evidence of
the value placed upon the ancient models; but this wonder pales before
the gasping astonishment at what is not there. Now and again a hint, a
reference, a recognition, but the moving forces which have made the
modern world are simply ignored. Yet they are all Hellenic, all part and
parcel of the Humanities in the true sense, and all of prime importance
in modern education. Twin berries on one stem, grievous damage has been
done to both in regarding the Humanities and Science in any other light
than complemental. Perhaps the anomalous position of science in our
philosophical school is due to the necessary filtration, indeed the
preservation, of our classical knowledge, through ecclesiastical
channels. Of this the persistence of the Augustinian questions until
late in the eighteenth century is an interesting indication. The moulder
of Western Christianity had not much use for science, and the Greek
spirit was stifled in the atmosphere of the Middle Ages. "Content to be
deceived, to live in a twilight of fiction, under clouds of false
witnesses, inventing according to convenience, and glad to welcome the
forger and the cheat"--such, as Lord Acton somewhere says, were the
Middle Ages. Strange, is it not? that one man alone, Roger Bacon,
mastered his environment and had a modern outlook.[9]
[9] How modern Bacon's outlook was may be judged from the
following sentence: "Experimental science has three
great prerogatives over all other sciences--it verifies
conclusions by direct experiment, it discovers truths which
they could never reach, and it investigates the secrets of
nature and opens to us a knowledge of the past and of the
future."
The practical point for us here is that in the only school dealing with
the philosophy of human thought, the sources of the new science that has
made a new world are practically ignored. One gets even an impression of
neglect in the schools, or at any rate of scant treatment, of the Ionian
philosophers, the very fathers of your fathers. Few "Greats" men, I
fear, could tell why Hippocrates is a living force to-day, or why a
modern scientific physician would feel more at home with Erasistratus
and Herophilus at Alexandria, or with Galen at Pergamos, than at any
period in our story up to, say, Harvey. Except as a delineator of
character, what does the Oxford scholar know of Theophrastus, the
founder of modern botany, and a living force to-day in one of the two
departments of biology, and made accessible to English readers--perhaps
indeed to Greek readers!--by Sir Arthur Hort?[10] Beggarly recognition
or base indifference is meted out to the men whose minds have fertilized
science in every department. The pulse of every student should beat
faster as he reads the story of Archimedes, of Hero, of Aristarchus,
names not even mentioned in the "Greats" papers in the past decade. Yet
the methods of these men exorcised vagaries and superstitions from the
human mind and pointed to a clear knowledge of the laws of nature. It is
surprising that some wag among the examiners has never relieved the
grave monotony of the papers by such peripatetic questions as "How long
a gnat lives," "To how many fathoms' depth the sunlight penetrates the
sea," and "What an oyster's soul is like"--questions which indicate
whence the modern Lucian got his inspiration to chaff so successfully
Boyle and the professors of Gresham College.
[10] Loeb Series.
May I dwell upon two instances of shocking neglect? It really is amusing
in Oxford to assert neglect of "the measurer of all Art and Science,
whose is all that is best in the passing sublunary world," as Richard de
Bury calls "the Prince of the Schooles." In Gulliver's voyage to Laputa
he paid a visit to the little island of Glubbdubdrib, whose Governor,
you remember, had an Endorian command over the spirits, such as Sir
Oliver Lodge or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle might envy. When Aristotle and
his commentators were summoned, to Gulliver's surprise they were
strangers, for the reason that having so horribly misrepresented
Aristotle's meaning to posterity, a consciousness of guilt and shame
kept them far away from him in the lower world. Such shame, I fear, will
make the shades of many classical dons of this university seek shelter
with the commentators when they realize their neglect of one of the most
fruitful of all the activities of the Master. In biology Aristotle
speaks for the first time the language of modern science, and indeed he
seems to have been first and foremost a biologist, and his natural
history studies influenced profoundly his sociology, his psychology, and
his philosophy in general. The beginner may be sent now to Professor
D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson's Herbert Spencer Lecture, 1913, and he must
be indeed a dull and muddy-mettled rascal whose imagination is not fired
by the enthusiastic--yet true--picture of the founder of modern biology,
whose language is our language, whose methods and problems are our own,
the man who knew a thousand varied forms of life,--of plant, of bird,
and animal,--their outward structure, their metamorphosis, their early
development; who studied the problems of heredity, of sex, of nutrition,
of growth, of adaptation, and of the struggle for existence.[11] And the
senior student, if capable of appreciating a biological discovery, I
advise to study the account by Johannes Müller[12] (himself a pioneer in
anatomy) of his rediscovery of Aristotle's remarkable discovery of a
special mode of reproduction in one of the species of sharks. For two
thousand years the founder of the science of embryology had neither
rival nor worthy follower. There is no reference, I believe, to the
biological works in the _Literæ Humaniores_ papers for the past ten
years, yet they form the very foundations of discoveries that have
turned our philosophies topsy-turvy.
[11] Summarized from D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson.
[12] _Ueber den Glatten Hai des Aristotles._ (Berlin, 1842.)
Nothing reveals the unfortunate break in Humanities more clearly than
the treatment of the greatest nature-poet in literature, a man who had
"gazed on Nature's naked loveliness" unabashed, the man who united, as
no one else has ever done, the "functions and temper and achievement of
science and poetry" (Herford). The golden work of Lucretius is indeed
recognized, and in Honour Moderations, Books I to III and V are set as
one of seven alternatives in section D; and scattered through the
"Greats" papers are set translations and snippets here and there; but
anything like adequate consideration from the scientific side is to be
sought in vain. Unmatched among the ancients or moderns is the vision by
Lucretius of continuity in the workings of Nature--not less of _le
silence éternel de ces espaces infinis_ which so affrighted Pascal, than
of "the long, limitless age of days, the age of all time that has gone
by"--
"... longa diei
infinita ætas anteacti temporis omnis."
And it is in a Latin poet that we find up-to-date views of the origin of
the world and of the origin of man. The description of the wild
discordant storm of atoms (Book V) which led to the birth of the world
might be transferred verbatim to the accounts of Poincaré or of
Arrhenius of the growth of new celestial bodies in the Milky Way. What
an insight into primitive man and the beginnings of civilization! He
might have been a contemporary and friend, and doubtless was a tutor, of
Tylor. Book II, a manual of atomic physics with its marvellous
conception of
"... the flaring atom streams
And torrents of her myriad universe,"
can only be read appreciatively by pupils of Roentgen or of J. J.
Thomson. The ring theory of magnetism advanced in Book VI has been
reproduced of late by Parsons, whose magnetons rotating as rings at high
speed have the form and effect with which this disciple of Democritus
clothes his magnetic physics.
And may I here enter a protest? Of love-philtres that produce insanity
we may read the truth in a chapter of that most pleasant manual of
erotology, the "Anatomy of Melancholy." Of insanity of any type that
leaves a mind capable in lucid intervals of writing such verses as _"De
Rerum Natura"_ we know nothing. The sole value of the myth is its causal
association with the poem of Tennyson. Only exsuccous dons who have
never known the wiles and ways of the younger Aphrodite would take the
intensity of the feeling in Book IV as witness to anything but an
accident which may happen to the wisest of the wise, when enthralled by
Vivien or some dark lady of the Sonnets!
In the School of _Literæ Humaniores_ the studies are based on classical
literature and on history, "but a large number of students approach
philosophical study from other sides. Students of such subjects as
mathematics, natural science, history, psychology, anthropology, or
political economy become naturally interested in philosophy, and their
needs are at present very imperfectly provided for in this university."
This I quote from a Report to the Board of the Faculty of Arts made just
before the war on a proposed new Honour School, the subject of which
should be the principles of philosophy considered in their relation to
the sciences. That joint action of this kind should have been taken by
the Boards of Arts and of Science indicates a widespread conviction that
no man is cultivated up to the standard of his generation who has not an
appreciation of how the greatest achievements of the human mind have
been reached; and the practical question is how to introduce such
studies into the course of liberal education, how to give the science
school the leaven of an old philosophy, how to leaven the old
philosophical school with the thoughts of science.[13]
[13] Since I wrote this lecture, Professor J. A. Stewart has
sent me his just-published essay on _Oxford after the War
and a Liberal Education_, in which he urges with all the
weight of his learning and experience that the foundations
of liberal education in Oxford should be "No Humane Letters
without Natural Science and no Natural Science without
Humane Letters."
It is important to recognize that there is nothing mysterious in the
method of science, or apart from the ordinary routine of life. Science
has been defined as the habit or faculty of observation. By such the
child grows in knowledge, and in its daily exercise an adult
lives and moves. Only a quantitative difference makes observation
scientific--accuracy; in that way alone do we discover things as they
really are. This is the essence of Plato's definition of science as "the
discovery of things as they really are," whether in the heavens above,
in the earth beneath, or in the observer himself. As a mental operation,
the scientific method is equally applicable to deciphering a bit of
Beneventan script, to the analysis of the evidence of the Commission on
Coal-Mines, a study of the mechanism of the nose-dive, or of the
colour-scheme in tiger-beetles. To observation and reasoned thought, the
Greek added experiment, but never fully used it in biology, an
instrument which has made science productive, and to which the modern
world owes its civilization. Our every-day existence depends on the
practical application of discoveries in pure science by men who had no
other motives than a search for knowledge of Nature's laws, a
disinterestedness which Burnet claims to be the distinctive gift of
Hellas to humanity. With the discovery of induced currents Faraday had
no thought of the dynamo. Crookes's tubes were a plaything until
Roentgen turned them into practical use with the X-rays. Perkin had no
thought of transforming chemical industry when he discovered aniline
dyes. Priestley would have cursed the observation that an electrical
charge produced nitrous acid had he foreseen that it would enable
Germany to prolong the war, but he would have blessed the thought that
it may make us independent of all outside sources for fertilizers.
The extraordinary development of modern science may be her undoing.
Specialism, now a necessity, has fragmented the specialities themselves
in a way that makes the outlook hazardous. The workers lose all sense of
proportion in a maze of minutiæ. Everywhere men are in small coteries
intensely absorbed in subjects of deep interest, but of very limited
scope. Chemistry, a century ago an appanage of the Chair of Medicine or
even of Divinity, has now a dozen departments, each with its laboratory
and literature, sometimes its own society. Applying themselves early to
research, young men get into backwaters far from the main stream. They
quickly lose the sense of proportion, become hypercritical, and the
smaller the field, the greater the tendency to megalocephaly. The study
for fourteen years of the variations in the colour-scheme of the
thirteen hundred species of tiger-beetles scattered over the earth may
sterilize a man into a sticker of pins and a paster of labels; on the
other hand, he may be a modern biologist whose interest is in the
experimental modification of types, and in the mysterious insulation of
hereditary characters from the environment. Only in one direction does
the modern specialist acknowledge his debt to the dead languages. Men of
science pay homage, as do no others, to the god of words whose magic
power is nowhere so manifest as in the plastic language of Greece. The
only visit many students pay to Parnassus is to get an intelligible
label for a fact or form newly discovered. Turn the pages of such a
dictionary of chemical terms as Morley and Muir, and you meet in
close-set columns countless names unknown a decade ago, and
unintelligible to the specialist in another department unless familiar
with Greek, and as meaningless as the Arabic jargon in such mediæval
collections as the "Synonyma" of Simon Januensis or the "Pandects" of
Matheas Sylvaticus. As "Punch" put it the other day in a delightful
poetical review of Professor West's volume:[14]
"Botany relies on Latin ever since Linnæus' days;
Biologic nomenclature draws on Greek in countless ways;
While in Medicine it is obvious you can never take your oath
What an ailment means exactly if you haven't studied both."
[14] _The Value of the Classics._ Princeton University Press,
1917.
Let me give a couple of examples.
Within the narrow compass of the primitive cell from which all living
beings originate, onomatomania runs riot. The process of mitosis has
developed a special literature and language. Dealing not alone with the
problems of heredity and of sex, but with the very dynamics of life, the
mitotic complex is much more than a simple physiological process, and in
the action and interaction of physical forces the cytologist hopes to
find the key to the secret of life itself. And what a Grecian he has
become! Listen to this account, which Aristotle would understand much
better than most of us.
The karyogranulomes, not the idiogranulomes or microsomenstratum in the
protoplasm of the spermatogonia, unite into the idiosphærosome, acrosoma
of Lenhossék, a protean phase, as the idiosphærosome differentiates into
an idiocryptosome and an idiocalyptosome, both surrounded by the
idiosphærotheca, the archoplasmic vesicle; but the idioectosome
disappears in the metamorphosis of the spermatid into a sphere, the
idiophtharosome. The separation of the calyptosome from the cryptosome
antedates the transformation of the idiosphærotheca into the
spermiocalyptrotheca.[15]
[15] Of course I have made this up out of a recent number of the
_American Journal of Anatomy_, 24, I.
Or take a more practical if less Cratylean example. In our precious
cabbage-patches the holometabolous insecta are the hosts of parasitic
polyembryonic hymenoptera, upon the prevalence of which rests the
psychic and somatic stamina of our fellow countrymen; for the larvæ of
_Pieris brassicæ_, vulgarly cabbage butterfly, are parasitiased by the
_Apantales glomeratus_, which in turn has a hyperparasite, the
_Mesochorus pallidus_. It is tragic to think that the fate of a plant,
the dietetic and pharmaceutical virtues of which have been so extolled
by Cato, and upon which two of my Plinean colleagues of uncertain date,
Chrysippus and Dieuches, wrote monographs--it fills one with terror to
think that a crop so dear to Hodge (_et veris cymata!_ the Brussels
sprouts of Columella) should depend on the deposition in the ovum of the
Pieris of another polyembryonic egg. The cytoplasm or oöplasm of this
forms a trophoamnion and develops into a polygerminal mass, a spherical
morula, from which in turn develop a hundred or more larvæ, which
immediately proceed to eat up everything in and of the body of their
host. Only in this way does Nature preserve the Selenas, the Leas, and
the Crambes, so dear to Cato and so necessary for the sustenance of our
hard-working, brawny-armed Brasserii.
From over-specialization scientific men are in a more parlous state than
are the Humanists from neglect of classical tradition. The salvation of
science lies in a recognition of a new philosophy--the _scientia
scientiarum_ of which Plato speaks. "Now when all these studies reach
the point of intercommunion and connection with one another and come to
be considered in their mutual affinities, then, I think, and not till
then, will the pursuit of them have a value." Upon this synthetic
process I hesitate to dwell; since, like Dr. Johnson's friend, Oliver
Edwards, I have never succeeded in mastering philosophy--cheerfulness
was always breaking in.
In the proposed Honour School the principles of philosophy are to be
dealt with in relation to the sciences, and by the introduction of
literary and historical studies, which George Sarton advocates so warmly
as the new Humanism,[16] the student will gain a knowledge of the
evolution of modern scientific thought. But to limit the history to the
modern period--Kepler to the present time is suggested--would be a grave
error. The scientific student should go to the sources and in some way
be taught the connection of Democritus with Dalton, of Archimedes with
Kelvin, of Aristarchus with Newton, of Galen with John Hunter, and of
Plato and Aristotle with them all. And the glories of Greek science
should be opened in a sympathetic way to "Greats" men. Under new
regulations at the public schools, a boy of sixteen or seventeen should
have enough science to appreciate the position of Theophrastus in
botany, and perhaps himself construct Hero's fountain. Science will take
a totally different position in this country when the knowledge of its
advances is the possession of all educated men. The time, too, is ripe
for the Bodleian to become a _studium generale_, with ten or more
departments, each in charge of a special sub-librarian. When the
beautiful rooms, over the portals of which are the mocking blue and gold
inscriptions, are once more alive with students, the task of teaching
subjects on historical lines will be greatly lightened. What has been
done with the Music-Room, and with the Science-Room through the
liberality of Dr. and Mrs. Singer, should be done for classics, history,
literature, theology, etc., each section in charge of a sub-librarian
who will be _Doctor perplexorum_ alike to professor, don, and
undergraduate.
[16] _Popular Science Monthly_, September, 1918, and _Scientia_,
XXIII, 3.
I wish time had permitted me to sketch even briefly the story of the
evolution of science in this old seat of learning. A fortunate
opportunity enables you to see two phases in its evolution. Through the
kind permission of several of the colleges, particularly Christ Church,
Merton, St. John's, and Oriel, and with the coöperation of the Curators
of the Bodleian and Dr. Cowley, Mr. R. T. Gunther, of Magdalen College,
has arranged a loan exhibition of the early scientific instruments and
manuscripts. A series of quadrants and astrolabes show how Arabian
instruments, themselves retaining much of the older Greek models, have
translated Alexandrian science into the Western world. Some were
constructed for the latitude of Oxford, and one was associated with our
astronomer-poet Chaucer.
For the first time the instruments and works of the early members of the
Merton School of astronomer-physicians have been brought together. They
belong to a group of men of the fourteenth century--Reed, Aschenden,
Simon Bredon, Merle, Richard of Wallingford, and others--whose labours
made Oxford the leading scientific university of the world.
Little remains of the scientific apparatus of the early period of the
Royal Society, but through the kindness of the Dean and Governing Body
of Christ Church, the entire contents of the cabinet of philosophical
apparatus of the Earl of Orrery, who flourished some thirty years after
the foundation of the Society, is on exhibit, and the actual
astronomical model, the "Orrery," made for him and called after his
name.[17]
[17] Among other notable exhibits there are:
1. A series of astronomical volvelles in manuscripts and
printed books.
2. The printed evidence that Leonard Digges of University
College was the inventor of the telescope many years before
Galileo.
3. The mathematical work of Robert Recorde of All Souls'
College, in which he suggested the St. Andrew's Cross as the
sign of multiplication, and uses symbols +, -, =.
4. The earliest known slide-rule in a circular form,
recently discovered in St. John's College.
5. The early vellum and wooden telescopes of the Orrery
Collection.
6. An original Marshall microscope.
7. Early surveying instruments, including the great quadrate
of Schissler.
The story of the free cities of Greece shows how a love of the higher
and brighter things in life may thrive in a democracy. Whether such love
may develop in a civilization based on a philosophy of force is the
present problem of the Western world. To-day there are doubts, even
thoughts of despair, but neither man nor nation is to be judged by the
behaviour in a paroxysm of delirium. Lavoisier perished in the
Revolution, and the Archbishop of Paris was butchered at the altar by
the Commune, yet France was not wrecked; and Russia may survive the
starvation of such scholars as Danielevski and Smirnov, and the massacre
of Botkin. To have intelligent freemen of the Greek type with a stake in
the State (not mere chattels from whose daily life the shadow of the
workhouse never lifts), to have the men and women who could love the
light put in surroundings in which the light may reach them, to
encourage in all a sense of brotherhood reaching the standard of the
Good Samaritan--surely the realization in a democracy of such reasonable
ambitions should be compatible with the control by science of the forces
of nature for the common good, and a love of all that is best in
religion, in art, and in literature.
Amid the smoke and squalor of a modern industrial city, after the
bread-and-butter struggle of the day, "the Discobolus has no gospel."
Our puritanized culture has been known to call the Antinous vulgar.
Copies of these two statues, you may remember, Samuel Butler found
stored away in the lumber-room of the Natural History Museum, Montreal,
with skins, plants, snakes, and insects, and in their midst, stuffing an
owl, sat "the brother-in-law of the haberdasher of Mr. Spurgeon."
Against the old man who thus blasphemed beauty, Butler broke into those
memorable verses with the refrain "O God! O Montreal!"
Let us not be discouraged. The direction of our vision is everything,
and after weltering four years in chaos poor stricken humanity still
nurses the unconquerable hope of an ideal state "whose citizens are
happy ... absolutely wise, all of them brave, just, and self-controlled
... all at peace and unity and in the enjoyment of legality, equality,
liberty, and all other good things." Lucian's winning picture of this
"Universal Happiness" might have been sketched by a Round Table pen or
some youthful secretary to the League of Nations. That such hope
persists is a witness to the power of ideals to captivate the mind and
the reality may be nearer than any of us dare dream. If survived, a
terrible infection, such as confluent smallpox, seems to benefit the
general health. Perhaps such an attack through which we have passed may
benefit the body cosmic. After discussing the various forms of
government, Plato concludes that "States are as the men are, they grow
out of human characters,"[18] and then, as the dream-republic approached
completion, he realized that after all the true State is within, of
which each one of us is the founder, and patterned on an ideal the
existence of which matters not a whit. Is not the need of this
individual reconstruction the Greek message to modern democracy? And
with it is blended the note of individual service to the community on
which Professor Gilbert Murray has so wisely dwelt.
[18] _Republic_, Book VIII.
With the hot blasts of hate still on our cheeks, it may seem a mockery
to speak of this as the saving asset in our future; but is it not the
very marrow of the teaching in which we have been brought up? At last
the gospel of the right to live, and the right to live healthy, happy
lives, has sunk deep into the hearts of the people; and before the
war, so great was the work of science in preventing untimely death
that the day of Isaiah seemed at hand, when a man's life should be
"more precious than fine gold, even a man than the golden wedge of
Ophir." There is a sentence in the writings of the Father of
Medicine upon which all commentators have lingered, "[Greek: ên gar
parê philanthrôpiê, paresti kai philotechniê]"[19]--the love of
humanity associated with the love of his craft!--philanthropia and
philotechnia--the joy of working joined in each one to a true love
of his brother. Memorable sentence indeed! in which for the first
time was coined the magic word "philanthropy," and conveying the
subtle suggestion that perhaps in this combination the longings of
humanity may find their solution, and Wisdom--_Philosophia_--at last be
justified of her children.
[19] _oeuvres complètes d' Hippocrates._ Par E. Littré, IX, 258.
THE END
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
U . S . A
Transcriber Notes:
Passages in italics were indicated by _underscores_.
Small caps were replaced with ALL CAPS.
Throughout the document, the oe ligature was replaced with "OE".
Errors in punctuation and inconsistent hyphenation were not corrected
unless otherwise noted.
Footnotes were moved to after the paragraph they were referenced in.
On page 26, the second open parenthesis was replaced with a closed
parenthesis.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Old Humanities and the New Science" ***
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