There is, therefore, really no question between Professor Huxley and me as to whether knowing the great results of the modern scientific study of nature is not required as a part of our culture, as well as knowing the products of literature and art.  But to follow the processes by which those results are reached, ought, say the friends of physical science, to be made the staple of education for the bulk of mankind.  And here there does arise a question between those whom Professor Huxley calls with playful sarcasm “the Levites of culture,” and those whom the poor humanist is sometimes apt to regard as its Nebuchadnezzars.

The great results of the scientific investigation of nature we are agreed upon knowing, but how much of our study are we bound to give to the processes by which those results are reached?  The results have their visible bearing on human life.  But all the processes, too, all the items of fact, by which those results are reached and established, are interesting.  All knowledge is interesting to a wise man, and the knowledge of nature is interesting to all men.  It is very interesting to know, that, from the albuminous white of the egg, the chick in the egg gets the materials for its flesh, bones, blood, and feathers; while from the fatty yolk of the egg, it gets the heat and energy which enable it at length to break its shell and begin the world.  It is less interesting, perhaps, but still it is interesting, to know that when a taper burns, the wax is converted into carbonic acid and water.  Moreover, it is quite true that the habit of dealing with facts, which is given by the study of nature, is, as the friends of physical science praise it for being, an excellent discipline.  The appeal, in the study of nature, is constantly to observation and experiment; not only is it said that the thing is so, but we can be made to see that it is so.  Not only does a man tell us that when a taper burns the wax is converted into carbonic acid and water, as a man may tell us, if he likes, that Charon is punting his ferry-boat on the river Styx, or that Victor Hugo is a sublime poet, or Mr. Gladstone the most admirable of statesmen; but we are made to see that the conversion into carbonic acid and water does actually happen.  This reality of natural knowledge it is, which makes the friends of physical science contrast it, as a knowledge of things, with the humanist’s knowledge, which is, say they, a knowledge of words.  And hence Professor Huxley is moved to lay it down that, “for the purpose of attaining real culture, an exclusively scientific education is at least as effectual as an exclusively literary education.”  And a certain President of the Section for Mechanical Science in the British Association is, in Scripture phrase, “very bold,” and declares that if a man, in his mental training, “has substituted literature and history for natural science, he has chosen the less useful alternative.”  But whether we go these lengths or not, we must all admit that in natural science the habit gained of dealing with facts is a most valuable discipline, and that every one should have some experience of it.