In a less degree, Roman literature, which is the offspring of Greek culture, has value as an intellectual stimulus and discipline. Here also the youthful mind is brought into the presence of a great and noble people, who, if they have less genius and a duller sense of beauty than the Greeks, excel them in steadiness of purpose, in dignity of character, in reverence for law and religion, and above all in the art of governing.
The educational value of the classics does not lie so much in the Greek and Latin languages as in the type of mind, the sense of proportion and beauty, the heroic temper, the philosophic mood, the keen relish for high enterprise, and the joyful love of life which they make known to us. The world to which they introduce us is so remote that the pre-occupations and vulgarities of the present, by which we all are hemmed and warped, fall away from us; and it is at the same time so real and of such absorbing interest that we are caught up in spirit and carried to the Attic Plain and the hills of Latium. They are useful, not because they teach us anything that may not be learned and learned more accurately from modern books, but because they move the mind, fire the heart, ennoble and refine the imagination in a way which nothing else has power to do. They are sources of inspiration; they first roused the modern mind to activity; and the potency of their influence can never cease to be felt by those whose aptitudes lead them to the love of intellectual perfection, who delight in 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 great the value of natural knowledge may be, it is, as an instrument of culture, inferior to literature. We are educated by what calls forth in us love and admiration, by what creates the exalted mood and the steadfast purpose. In bowing with reverence to what is above us, we are uplifted. When we are moved, we are more alive; we are stronger, tenderer, nobler. Now to look upon Nature with the detective eye of the man of science is to be cold and unsympathetic; to learn by methodic experiment is to gain knowledge, which, since it is only remotely or indirectly related to life, is but little interesting. Such knowledge is a fragment, and a fragment extremely difficult to fit into the temple built by thought and love, by hope and imagination; and hence when we have learned a great deal about chemical elements, geologic epochs, correlation of forces, and sidereal spaces, we are rather astonished than enlightened. We are brought into the presence of a world which is not that of the senses, nor yet that which faith, hope, and love forebode; and the bearing it may have upon human life is of more interest to us than the facts made known. We are, indeed, curious to know whatever may, with any certainty, be told us of atoms and biogenesis; but our real concern is to learn what significance such truth may have in its relation to questions of God and the soul.
There is doubtless a disciplinary value in the study of physical science. It trains the mind to habits of patient attention, of careful observation, teaches the danger of hasty generalization, and diminishes intellectual conceit; but these results may also be obtained by other means. The aim of education is not simply to develop this or the other faculty, however indispensable, nor yet to make one thoroughly conversant with a particular order of facts, but the aim is to bring about a conscious participation in the life of the race, to evoke all the powers of man, so that his whole being shall be quickened and made responsive to the touch of things seen and unseen; and the study of science is less adapted to the attainment of this end than the study of human letters. The scientific temper draws to specialties; and specialists are narrow, are incomplete. They, each in his own line, do good work, and are the chief agents for the increase of natural knowledge, and are, we may grant, leaders in every kind of improvement; but like the operatives who provide our comforts and luxuries, they are themselves warped and crippled by what they do. The habit of looking at a single order of facts, coldly and always from the same point of view, takes from the mind flexibility, weakens the imagination, and puts fetters on the soul; and hence though it is important that there be specialists, the kind of education by which they are formed, while it is suited to make a geologist, a chemist, a mathematician, or a botanist, is not suited to call forth the free and harmonious play of all man's powers. We do not live on facts alone, much less on facts of a single kind. Religion and poetry, love, hope, and imagination are as essential to our well-being as science. Human life is knowledge, is faith, is conduct, is beauty, is manners; it unfolds itself in many directions and shoots its roots into infinitude; and for the general purposes of education, science is learned to best advantage when it is embodied in literature, and its methods and results, rather than the details of its work, are presented to us. Whatever it is able to do, to improve the mind, to widen the range of thought, to give true notions of the workings of Nature,—it will do for whoever learns accurately its general conceptions and results; and these cannot remain unknown to him whose aim is culture, for such an one is, as Plato says, "A lover not of a part of wisdom, but of the whole, and has a taste for every sort of knowledge, and is curious to learn, and is never satisfied; and though he will not know medicine like a physician, or the heavens like an astronomer, or the vegetable kingdom like a botanist, his mind will play over all these realms with freedom, and he will know how to relate the principles and facts of all the sciences to our sense for beauty, for conduct, for life and religion in a way which a mere specialist can never find." And his view will not only be wider and less impeded, it will also be deeper than that of the man of science; for he who sees but one order of things sees only their surfaces, just as he who sees but one thing sees nothing at all.
It would be a mistake to imagine that the ideal here commended, means superficial accomplishments, an excessive love of style and the ornaments of poetry and eloquence, or preoccupation in favor of aught external or frivolous. It is the very opposite of dilettantism, and if it mean anything, means thoroughness, and a thoroughness which can come only of untiring labor carried on through many years; for time and intercourse with men and varied experience are indispensable elements. It is like the ideal of religion which makes the saint think himself a sinner; it is as exacting as the miser's thought which makes millions seem to be beggary; like the artist's vision, like the poet's dream, it allures and yet forbids hope of attainment. The seeker after wisdom must have a high purpose, a strong soul, and the purest love of truth. He cannot live in the senses alone, nor in the mind, nor in the heart alone, but the spiritual being, which is himself, yearns for whatever is good, whatever is true, whatever is fair, and so he finds himself akin to the infinite God and to all that he has made. When his thought is carried out to atoms weaving the garment which is our body, and molding the world we see and touch; when he beholds motion lighting, warming, thrilling the universe,—he is filled with intellectual joy, but at the same time he perceives that all this is but a phase of truth; that God and the boundless facts are infinitely more than drilled atomics marshaled rank on rank until they form the countless hosts of the heavens. When the men of science have labeled the elements, and put tickets upon all natural compounds, and with complacency declare that this is the whole truth, he looks on the flowers around him and the blooming children, on the stars above his head, on the sun slow wheeling down the western horizon, on the moon climbing some eastern hill, and his inmost soul is glad because he feels the thrill of the infinite, living Spirit, and forebodes to what fair countries we are bound.
And when they proclaim the wonders science has wrought,—increase of physical enjoyment and social comfort; the yoking of lightning and steam to make them work for man; the providing of more abundant food; the building of more wholesome dwellings; the lengthening of life; temporal benefits of every kind,—he joins with those who utter praise, but knows that infinitely more than all this goes to the making of man's life. So he turns his mind in many directions, and while he looks on the truth in science, does not grow blind to the truth in religion; while he knows the value of what is practically useful, understands also the priceless worth of what is noble and beautiful, and his acquaintance with many kinds of thought, with many shades of opinion confirms him, as Joubert says, in the acceptance of the best.