he policy, both external and
internal, adopted by their countrymen. Like most monopolists, they
showed a marked tendency to abuse the advantages of their position.
Science was relegated to a position of humiliating inferiority, and had
to content itself with picking up whatever crumbs were, with a lordly
and at times almost contemptuous tolerance, allowed to fall from the
humanistic table. Bossuet once defined a heretic as "celui qui a une
opinion" ([Greek: airesis]). A somewhat similar attitude was at one time
adopted to those who were inclined to doubt whether a knowledge of Latin
and Greek could be considered the Alpha and Omega of a sound education.
The calm judgment of that great humanist, Professor Jebb, led him to the
conclusion that the claims of the humanities have been at times defended
by pleas which were exaggerated and paradoxical--using this latter term
in the sense of arguments which contain an element of truth, but of
truth which has been distorted--and that in an age remarkable beyond all
previous ages for scientific research and discoveries, that nation must
necessarily lag behind which, in the well-known words uttered by Gibbon
at a time when science was still in swaddling-clothes, fears that the
"finer feelings" are destroyed if the mind becomes "hardened by the
habit of rigid demonstration." All this has now been changed. Professor
Huxley did not live in vain. His mantle fell on the shoulders of many
other doughty champions who shared his views. Science no longer slinks
modestly in educational bypaths, but occupies the high road, and, to say
the least, marches abreast of her humanistic sister. Yet the scientists
are not yet content. Their souls are athirst for further victories. A
high authority on education, himself a classical scholar,[90] has
recently told us that, although the English boy "as he emerges from the
crucible of the public school laboratory" may be a fairly good agent
for dealing with the "lower or more submissive races in the wilds of
Africa or in the plains of India," elsewhere--notably in Canada--he is
"a conspicuous failure"; that one of the principal reasons why he is a
failure is that "the influence of the humanists still reigns over us";
and that "the future destiny of the Empire is wrapt up in the immediate
reform of England's educational system." In the course of that reform,
which it is proposed should be of a very drastic character, some
half-hearted efforts may conceivably