terary studies (under the name of music) to mathematics
and to physics as well as to logic and metaphysics. But on the other
hand, knowledge of nature is not an end in itself; it is a necessary
stage in bringing the mind to a realization of the supreme purpose of
existence as the law of human action, corporate and individual. To use
the modern phraseology, naturalistic studies are indispensable, but they
are in the interests of humanistic and ideal ends.

Aristotle goes even farther, if anything, in the direction of
naturalistic studies. He subordinates (ante, p. 254) civic relations
to the purely cognitive life. The highest end of man is not human but
divine--participation in pure knowing which constitutes the divine life.
Such knowing deals with what is universal and necessary, and finds,
therefore, a more adequate subject matter in nature at its best than in
the transient things of man. If we take what the philosophers stood
for in Greek life, rather than the details of what they say, we might
summarize by saying that the Greeks were too much interested in free
inquiry into natural fact and in the aesthetic enjoyment of nature, and
were too deeply conscious of the extent in which society is rooted in
nature and subject to its laws, to think of bringing man and nature
into conflict. Two factors conspire in the later period of ancient
life, however, to exalt literary and humanistic studies. One is the
increasingly reminiscent and borrowed character of culture; the other is
the political and rhetorical bent of Roman life.

Greek achievement in civilization was native; the civilization of the
Alexandrians and Romans was inherited from alien sources. Consequently
it looked back to the records upon which it drew, instead of looking
out directly upon nature and society, for material and inspiration.
We cannot do better than quote the words of Hatch to indicate the
consequences for educational theory and practice. "Greece on one hand
had lost political power, and on the other possessed in her splendid
literature an inalienable heritage. It was natural that she should turn
to letters. It was natural also that the study of letters should be
reflected upon speech. The mass of men in the Greek world tended to lay
stress on that acquaintance with the literature of bygone generations,
and that habit of cultivated speech, which has ever since been commonly
spoken of as education. Our own comes by direct tradition from it. It
set a