hat good should be forever present to
them,--the need of humane letters to establish a relation between the
new conceptions, and our instinct for beauty, our instinct for conduct,
is only the more visible. The middle age could do without humane
letters, as it could do without the study of nature, because its
supposed knowledge was made to engage its emotions so powerfully. Grant
that the supposed knowledge disappears, its power of being made to
engage the emotions will of course disappear along with it,--but the
emotions themselves, and their claim to be engaged and satisfied, will
remain. Now if we find by experience that humane letters have an
undeniable power of engaging the emotions, the importance of humane
letters in a man's training becomes not less, but greater, in proportion
to the success of modern science in extirpating what it calls "mediaeval
thinking."

Have humane letters, then, have poetry and eloquence, the power here
attributed to them of engaging the emotions, and do they exercise it?
And if they have it and exercise it, _how_ do they exercise it, so as to
exert an influence upon man's sense for conduct, his sense for beauty?
Finally, even if they both can and do exert an influence upon the senses
in question, how are they to relate to them the results,--the modern
results,--of natural science? All these questions may be asked. First,
have poetry and eloquence the power of calling out the emotions? The
appeal is to experience. Experience shows that for the vast majority of
men, for mankind in general, they have the power. Next, do they exercise
it? They do. But then, _how_ do they exercise it so as to affect man's
sense for conduct, his sense for beauty? And this is perhaps a case for
applying the Preacher's words: "Though a man labor to seek it out, yet
he shall not find it; yea, further, though a wise man think to know it,
yet shall he not be able to find it."[21] Why should it be one thing, in
its effect upon the emotions, to say, "Patience is a virtue," and quite
another thing, in its effect upon the emotions, to say with Homer,

[Greek: tlaeton gar Moirai thumon thesan anthropoisin--[22]]

"for an enduring heart have the destinies appointed to the children of
men"? Why should it be one thing, in its effect upon the emotions, to
say with philosopher Spinoza, _Felicitas in eo consistit quod homo suum
esse conservare potest_--"Man's happiness consists in his being able to
preserve his own essenc