" There can be no doubt that Wolf[125] is
perfectly right; that all learning is scientific which is systematically
laid out and followed up to its original sources, and that a genuine
humanism is scientific.
When I speak of knowing Greek and Roman antiquity, therefore, as a help
to knowing ourselves and the world, I mean more than a knowledge of so
much vocabulary, so much grammar, so many portions of authors in the
Greek and Latin languages, I mean knowing the Greeks and Romans, and
their life and genius, and what they were and did in the world; what we
get from them, and what is its value. That, at least, is the ideal; and
when we talk of endeavoring to know Greek and Roman antiquity, as a help
to knowing ourselves and the world, we mean endeavoring so to know them
as to satisfy this ideal, however much we may still fall short of it.
The same also as to knowing our own and other modern nations, with the
like aim of getting to understand ourselves and the world. To know the
best that has been thought and said by the modern nations, is to know,
says Professor Huxley, "only what modern _literatures_ have to tell us;
it is the criticism of life contained in modern literature.
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