ern world of the United States, even more
perhaps than in Europe, a very popular design, and makes great and rapid
progress.

I am going to ask whether the present movement for ousting letters from
their old predominance in education, and for transferring the
predominance in education to the natural sciences, whether this brisk
and flourishing movement ought to prevail, and whether it is likely that
in the end it really will prevail. An objection may be raised which I
will anticipate. My own studies have been almost wholly in letters, and
my visits to the field of the natural sciences have been very slight and
inadequate, although those sciences have always strongly moved my
curiosity. A man of letters, it will perhaps be said, is not competent
to discuss the comparative merits of letters and natural science as
means of education. To this objection I reply, first of all, that his
incompetence, if he attempts the discussion but is really incompetent
for it, will be abundantly visible; nobody will be taken in; he will
have plenty of sharp observers and critics to save mankind from that
danger. But the line I am going to follow is, as you will soon discover,
so extremely simple, that perhaps it may be followed without failure
even by one who for a more ambitious line of discussion would be quite
incompetent.

Some of you may possibly remember a phrase of mine which has been the
object of a good deal of comment; an observation to the effect that in
our culture, the aim being _to know ourselves and the world_, we have,
as the means to this end, _to know the best which has been thought and
said in the world_.[121] A man of science, who is also an excellent
writer and the very prince of debaters, Professor Huxley, in a discourse
[122] at the opening of Sir Josiah Mason's college at Birmingham, laying
hold of this phrase, expanded it by quoting some more words of mine,
which are these: "The civilized world is to be regarded as now being,
for intellectual and spiritual purposes, one great confederation, bound
to a joint action and working to a common result; and whose members have
for their proper outfit a knowledge of Greek, Roman, and Eastern
antiquity, and of one another. Special local and temporary advantages
being put out of account, that modern nation will in the intellectual
and spiritual sphere make most progress, which most thoroughly carries
out this programme."[123]

Now on my phrase, thus enlarged, Professor Huxle