Author: Henry Waldgrave Stuart

Publisher:

Published: 2015-07-13

Total Pages: 76

ISBN-13: 9781331308911

Excerpt from Liberal and Vocational Studies in the College 1. It is seldom that an important question is finally settled in the terms of its original statement. After much argument a new issue, unsuspected on either side, begins to show itself, cutting across the earlier dividing line. The conclusion reached, perhaps after a series of such changes, may make much of the debate seem meaningless; and all parties in interest may rejoice that neither of the original contentions was able to prevail. As argument proceeds, each side, whether it will admit it or not, ordinarily grows less eager to convince the other of what is beginning to appear a short-sighted distortion of the truth. It is said that no one is ever convinced by argument. But it need not be the sole function of argument to convince. It is better to be enlightened and to enlighten than to convince or be convinced. In these trite reflections, I have in mind the controversy, so rife not many years since, as to the value of the natural sciences as compared with classical and other literary studies. We all remember the main lines of the argument. On the part of the traditional collegiate curriculum it was argued that the proper study of mankind was man. Education, in its ultimate meaning, consists not in factual knowledge but in standards of taste, of judgment and of conduct. To these, saints, philosophers and artists have given supreme expression. As for the world of Nature, it has been the office of poets, metaphysicians and prophets to divine, in each age, the vital significance of what the sciences have had to tell. Plato, Lucretius, Dante, Milton, Tennyson and Stevenson gave the interpretative comment in terms of life upon successive scientific conceptions of the cosmos. And for the generality of thoughtful persons, who wish to see life steadily and see it whole, the comment is more to be desired than the text, the distilled significance more precious than the crude materials. A landscape must be surveyed from a mountain top - not from the tangled thickets about the base or from a hole in the ground. A young instructor in English once had occasion to express to me his disesteem of a professor of chemistry. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."