Essays and addresses / by professors and lecturers of the Owens College, Manchester.

  • Victoria University of Manchester
Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Essays and addresses / by professors and lecturers of the Owens College, Manchester. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    physical science—it may be added that it is signally fitted to counteract some faults alleged, not without reason, to be inherent in the other two—the contempt which the mere mathematician is apt to feel for all reasoning but that which deals with necessary matter, and the tendency sometimes seen in classical scholars to lean too much on authority. It is, again, a charac- teristic of studies in literature and history that they neither limit us to the impersonal nor to the present, but carry us up through ascending generations from to-day to the remotest past. They thus impress upon us the subordination of one generation to those before it, and the subordination of the individual to the race. Studies of language and literature, of course, have no monopoly of these humanities; and, notably, some of the leaders of science in our day are animated by the noblest sentiments in this regard : but this seems due rather to their deep historical sense of the links that bind modern to ancient science than to the inherent tendency of their studies. In some sciences, in fact, the very basis of the teaching may change from decade to decade, and into all the historical method enters only in the slightest measure; whereas the historical and traditional aspects of language-studies are of their very essence. Hence it is that we are compelled to hear so much at once of the exclu- sively material value of science-studies and of their independence of former times and of all authority properly so called. But this latter feature of these studies—so valuable, as we have seen, from one point of view—if not counteracted or rather supple- mented by other influences, is in danger of leading to
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