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Professor Tyndall, in the Preface to his great work on “Heat as a mode of Motion,” calls Science “the noblest growth of modern times,” and adds that “as a means of intellectual education its claims are still disputed, though, once properly organized, greater and more beneficent revolutions wait its employment here than those which have marked its application in the material world” (2d ed., p. x). Since the publication of this book, and indeed since the opening of the Age of Science, the relative claims of Science and Literature to form the basis of intellectual instruction have been incessantly debated by men qualified by experience in tuition (which I cannot claim to be) to form a judgment on the subject. There has been, however, I think, too little attention given on either side to the relative moral influences of the two studies.

In addressing the London Society for the Extension of University Teaching on March 3 last, Sir James Paget expressed his dissent from Professor Morley’s opinion (given on a similar occasion last year) that “Literature was an excellent, if not a better study than Science.” Sir James maintained, on the contrary, that “nothing could better advance human prosperity than Science,” and he elaborately set forth the specific benefits of a scientific education as he conceived them, as follows:—