So far as they adopt the idea of science
appropriate to its experimental method and to the movements of a
democratic and industrial society, they have no difficulty in
showing that natural science is more humanistic than an alleged
humanism which bases its educational schemes upon the specialized
interests of a leisure class. For, as we have already stated,
humanistic studies when set in opposition to study of nature are
hampered. They tend to reduce themselves to exclusively literary
and linguistic studies, which in turn tend to shrink to "the
classics," to languages no longer spoken. For modern languages
may evidently be put to use, and hence fall under the ban. It
would be hard to find anything in history more ironical than the
educational practices which have identified the "humanities"
exclusively with a knowledge of Greek and Latin. Greek and Roman
art and institutions made such important contributions to our
civilization that there should always be the amplest
opportunities for making their acquaintance. But to regard them
as par excellence the humane studies involves a deliberate
neglect of the possibilities of the subject matter which is
accessible in education to the masses, and tends to cultivate a
narrow snobbery: that of a learned class whose insignia are the
accidents of exclusive opportunity. Knowledge is humanistic in
quality not because it is about human products in the past, but
because of what it does in liberating human intelligence and
human sympathy.
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