tering as it does in a thousand
ways and with ever-increasing efficacy to our wants and comforts, has
but an inferior educational power. Acquaintance with the uniform
co-existences and sequences of phenomena is not a mental tonic. Such
knowledge not only leaves us unmoved,--it has a tendency even to fetter
the free play of the mind and to chill the imagination. It unweaves the
rainbow, and leaves us the dead chemical elements. The information we
have gained is practical, but it does not exalt the soul or render us
more keenly alive to the divine beauty which rests on Nature's face. It
does not enable us, as does the knowledge of literature and history, to
participate in the conscious life of the race. It makes no appeal to our
nobler human instincts. There is no book on natural science, nor can
there ever be one, which may take a place among the few immortal works
which men never cease to read and love. Physical science has its own
domain, and its study will continue to enrich the world, to make
specialists of a hundred kinds; but it never can take the place of
literature and history as a means of culture; and as an educational
force its value is greatest when it is studied not experimentally, but
as literature,--though of course, every cultivated man should be
familiar with the inductive method, and should receive consequently a
certain scientific training.

History, in bringing us into the presence of the greatest men and in
showing us their mightiest achievements, rouses our whole being. It sets
the mind aglow, awakens enthusiasm, and fires the imagination. It makes
us feel how blessed a thing it is "to scorn delights and live laborious
days;" how divine to perish in bringing truth and holiness to men. We
commingle with the makers of the world; we hear them speak and see them
act; we catch the spirit of their lofty purpose, their high courage,
their noble eloquence. When we drink deeply of the wisdom which history
teaches, we come to understand that truth and justice, heroism and
religion, which are the virtues of the greatest men, may be ours as
easily as theirs; that opportunity for true men is ever present, and
that the task set for each one of us is as sacred and important as any
which has ever been entrusted to the human mind and will. Our thought
is widened, our hearts are strengthened, and we come to feel that it
shall be well for others that we too have lived. When we have learned to
be at home with lofty and