be made to effect the salvage of
whatever will remain of the humanistic wreck, but the real motto of the
reformers will almost certainly be Utilitarianism, writ large. The
humanists, therefore, are placed on their defence. It may be that the
walls of their entrenchment, which have already been a good deal
battered, will fall down altogether, and that the garrison will be asked
to submit to a capitulation which will be almost unconditional.

In the midst of the din of battle which may already be heard, and which
will probably ere long become louder, it seems very desirable that the
voices of those who are neither profound scholars nor accomplished
scientists nor educational experts should be heard. These--and there are
many such--ask, What is the end which we should seek to attain? Can
science alone be trusted to prevent education becoming, in the words of
that sturdy old pagan, Thomas Love Peacock, a "means for giving a fixed
direction to stupidity"? The answer they, or many of them, give to these
questions is that the main end of education is to teach people to think,
and that they are not prepared to play false to their own intellects to
such an extent as to believe that the national power of thinking will
not be impaired if it is deprived of the teaching of the most thoughtful
nation which the world has ever known. That nation is Greece. These
classes, therefore, lift up their hands in supplication to scientists,
educational experts, and parliamentarians--yea, even to soulless
wire-pullers who would perhaps willingly cast Homer and Sophocles to the
dogs in order to win a contested election--and with one voice cry: We
recognise the need of reform; we wish to march with the times; we are no
enemies to science; but in the midst of your utilitarian ideas, we
implore you, in the name both of learning and common sense, to devise
some scheme which will still enable the humanities to act as some check
on the growing materialism of the age; otherwise the last stage of the
educated youth of this country will be worse than the first; remember
what Lucretius--on the bold assumption that wire-pullers ever read
Lucretius--said, "Hic Acherusia stultorum denique vita"; above all
things, let there be no panic legislation--and panic is a danger to
which democracies and even, Pindar has told us, "the sons of the
gods,"[91] are greatly exposed; in taking any new departure let us,
therefore, very carefully and deliberately consider how we