THE CONTEMPORARY CHALLENGE TO FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 63

Christian Platonism which checked the progress of Astronomy,
of Chemistry, of Physics, and of Biology guided the pen of
Gladstone in his luckless onslaught on the evolutionists. In the
year after the publication of Darwin's book Gladstone expressed
the official view of the English governing classes in a memorandum
for Lord Lyttelton with reference to the Public Schools Com-
mission.1 ^

Why, after all, is the classical training paramount ... ? Is it
because we find it established, because it improves memory and
taste or gives precision or develops the faculty of speech? All
these are but . , . narrow glimpses of a great and comprehensive
truth. . . . The modern European civilization ... is the com-
pound of two great factors, the Christian religion for the spirit
of man and the Greek, and in a secondary degree the Roman,
discipline for his mind and intellect. St. Paul is the apostle of the
Gentiles and in his own person a symbol of this great wedding
—the place of Aristode and Plato in Christian education is not
arbitary nor in principle mutable.

Much water has passed under the bridges since Gladstone told
Parliament that "after all science is but a small part of education."2
The Universities Test Acts have been repealed. Natural Science
and the humanities are now co-partners in university property
and according to the more or less explicit articles of partnership
there are two sorts of knowledge: useful or scientific, and humane
or gentlemanly. Useful knowledge leads you to definite con-
clusions, and (like 1066) this is a good thing because it gives vis
motor cars promoting travel whereby gentlemen can come to
no conclusions about more topics. The mission of humane know-
ledge is to prevent you from coming to definite conclusions by
propounding the unanswerable. This is also a good thing. When
curiosity might tempt them to conclusions which prompt un-
gendemanly effort or disloyalty to the property rights of other
gentlemen, it takes gentlemen out of danger.

1 Morley, Appendix, p. 445,1911 edition, ref. to VoL ii, p. 236.

2 Morley, Book m, Chap. VHI.