n the free play of the mind, who
are attracted by what is symmetrical, who have the instinct for beauty,
who swim in a current of ideas as naturally as birds fly in the air.
They appeal to the mind as a whole, stimulate all its faculties, awaken
a many-sided sympathy both with Nature and with the world of men. They
widen our view of life, bring forth in us the consciousness of our
kinship with the human race, and of the application to ourselves,
however common and uninspiring our surroundings may be, of the best
thoughts and noblest deeds which have ever sprung from the brain and
heart of man. They help to make one, again to quote Plato, "A lover, not
of a part of wisdom, but of the whole; who has a taste for every sort of
knowledge, and is curious to learn and is never satisfied; who has
magnificence of mind, and is a spectator of all time and all existence;
who is harmoniously constituted, of a well-proportioned and gracious
mind, whose own nature will move spontaneously toward the true being of
everything; who has a good memory, and is quick to learn, noble,
gracious, the friend of truth, justice, courage, temperance." The ideal
presented is that of complete harmonious culture, the aim of which is
not to make an artisan, a physician, a merchant, a lawyer, but a man
alive in all his faculties, touching the world at many points, for whom
all knowledge is desirable, all beauty lovable, and for whom fine
bearing and noble acting are indispensable.

It is needless to point out in what, or why, the Greeks failed, since
here there is question only of intellectual life, and in this they did
not fail. Nor is there any thought, in what has here been said, of
depreciating the worth of the study of science, without a certain
knowledge of which no one, in this age, can in any true sense, be called
educated. Whoever, indeed, learns a language properly, acquires
scientific knowledge; and the Greeks are not only the masters in poetry
and eloquence, they are also the guides to the right use of reason and
to scientific method, and the teachers of mathematics, logic, and
physics. He who pursues culture, in the Greek spirit, who desires to see
things as they are, to know the best that has been thought and done by
men, will fear nothing so much as the exclusion of any truth, and he
will be anxious to acquaint himself not only with the method, but as
far as possible with the facts, of physical science. Still he perceives
that however grea