man
proposes to chronicle a 'Conflict between Religion and Science,' and
makes religion stand indiscriminately for Romanism, Mohammedanism,
superstition, malignant passion, obstinate prejudice, and what not,
also confounding Christianity with so-called Christians, and those
often most unrepresentative,--at the same time appropriating to
'Science' all intellectual activity whatever, though found in good
Christian men, and though fostered and made irrepressible by the fire
of that very religion, it is easy to see what must be the outcome of
such a sweepstakes race. There will be a deification of science, and
not even a whited sepulchre erected over the measureless Golgothas of
its slaughtered theories. There will be, on the other hand, the steady
_suppressio veri_ concerning books, systems, men, and events, the
occasional though unintended _assertio falsi_, the eager conversion of
theories into facts, constructions unfair and uncandid and,
throughout, with much that is bright and just, that 'admixture of a
lie that doth ever add pleasure' to its author and grief to the
judicious. Such confusions are no doubt often the outgrowth of the
will. But a main end of a true culture is to prevent or expose all
such bewilderments, whether helpless or crafty.

"The great predominance of the disciplinary process was what once
characterized the English university system even more than now. It
consisted in the exact and exhaustive mastery of certain limited
sections of knowledge and thought, as the gymnastic for all other
spheres and toils. At Oxford, not long ago, four years were spent in
mastering some fourteen books. Whatever may be our criticism of the
process, we may not deny its singular effect. In its best estate it
forged many a trenchant blade. To the man who asks for its monument,
it can point to British thought, law, statesmanship. Bacon and Burke,
Coke and Eldon, Hooker and Butler, Pitt and Canning, shall make
answer. The whole massive literature of England shall respond.

"But to this precision of working must be furnished material with
which to work. Mental fullness is, therefore, another prime quality of
a manly culture. To what degree it should be sought in the curriculum
has been in dispute. It is the American theory, and a growing belief
of the English nation, that the British universities have been
defective here. Their men of mark have traveled later over the broader
field.

"Provincialism of intellect is a cala