Iowa County democrat. [volume] (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1877-1938, 1882-06-09
EDUCATIONAL DEPARTMENT.
conducted by J. II. Terry, Principal of Mineral
Point Public Shoots

A reviewer of Professor Huxley's
recently published work, Science
and Culture, writes as follows re-
garding the higher institutions Of
learning of the present day:
The opening of Sir Josiah Mason's
Science College at Birmingham has
furnished Huxley with an appio-
pirate occasion to press the claims of
science as an essential element of a
liberal education. He speaks for
all semitic men when he saws:
After having learned all that Greek
Roman, and Eastern antiquity has
thought and said, and all that mod
ern literatures have to tell us, it is
not self-evident that we have laid a
sufficiently broad and deep founda-
ton for that criticism of life which
constitutes culture" But this
broader standard is by no means
generally accepted. The man who
has learned Latin and Greek is still
considered the educated man par ex-
cellence, while he who has perhaps
reached the highest eminence in
other branches is considered a spe-
cialist, and left tout side the cultured
caste" Our universities are still
practically in the hands of the
"Philistines. :" Their highest hon
ors, their chosen degrees, their
greatest prizes are not within the
reach of the scientific student, un-
less he be also a classical scholar.
Indeed, they are less liberal toward
the learned professions of our day
than were the ancient universities
to those of their time: they opened
their doors to the faculties of medi-
cine, divinity, and law, which have
remained ever since an integral part
OF the university programme, while
scientific professions of more recent
growth, but no less vitality connected
with the progress of knowledge,
stand outside, or are admitted on
sufferance. The scientific student
asks only to share, not to curtail,
the honors Of his classical and liter
airy fellow-students. In the nine
tenth century, when every year is
broadening the domain of know
ledge, no set of men can claim to be
the dispensers of true culture. Hux-
ley has well said that in the ideal
university "all sources of knowledge
and all aids to learning should be
accessible to all comers." Such a
university the age demands, and if
the men of the past do not meet the
men of present half way, they may
lind themselves left behind among
the priests of the monastic period of
the nineteenth century. We cannot
leave the material claims of the com
munity out of consideration. Scien-
ttic investigation is shaping the
opinions of men, and daily proving
It's right to recognition by the cult
waited classes. The despised practi
cal men are often the most eminent
specialists of their time; they have
obtained ''firm grasp ofprinciples"
10y personal experience.
Our modern universities need the
sympathy of the artisan, the inven-
tor, and still more of the original
investigator, who provides them
both with every new materials and
resources. They are the men whose
pulse IS felt to the furthest borders
OF the land; and yet these men, I'M
less they have hal some smattering
of Latin and Greek, are excluded
from the so-called educated class.
Neither Hugh Miller, nor George
stevenson, nor Davy, nor Fara-
day, nor Franklin could receive uni
vcIsity honors. II may bv asked
how the university can confer her
degrees upon those who, from force
OF circumstances or from deliberate
choice, have not fulfilled the condit-
ions upon which their degrees are
based. To this one can only answer
that the university must enlarge her
borders. Let her offer every man
such instruction as he has time and
means to accept, without binding
him to a given period or a certain
enforced amount of latin and Greek;
and in her awards let eninence in
any department of true knowledge
be accepted as evidence of learning
and intelligence Let the physicists
the chemists, the engineers, the
biologists, the mathamaticians, and
the naturalists enter the charmed
circle Of the historians, the poets
the phllologists, the metaphysicians
who have hitherto represented the
cultivated class. 50 will the uni.
versities strengthen their own hands
and draw to themselves the mer
who are peers in attainment, how
ever distinct may be the fields o.
their activity
In his opening address as Lord
Rector ofthe University of Aberdeen
Huxley defines the proper functions
of universities from his point OF
view, and emphasizes again the risk
for themselves in excluding from
! their domain the science of IN dow