Huxley, who was a great champion of scientific education, said
“The position that science is now assuming is such that those who remain
entirely ignorant of even its elementary facts are in a wholly unfair
as regards the world of thoughts and the world of practical life.”
Science is the main ingredient in the scheme of liberal education outlined
by Huxley, “That man, I think, has had a liberal education who has been
so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, and does
with ease and pleasure all the work that, as a mechanism, it is capable of,
whose intellect is a clear, cold, logic engine, with all its parts of equal
strength, and in smooth working order; ready, like a steam engine, to be
turned to any kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well as forge the
anchors of the mind; whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the great
and fundamental truths of Nature and of the laws of her operation; one
who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose passions are
trained to come to peel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender
conscience, who has learnt to love all beauty, whether of Nature or of art,
to hate all vileness, and to respect others as himself.” If science helps us
in achieving this, science must form an integral part of modern liberal
education; but if science does not do this, we should dismiss it as mere
weariness of the flesh, a jejune insanity. Scientific education gives us a
clear and deep insight into the nature or reality of things. Wonderful
changes in the world are due simply to the application of scientific
knowledge. Scientific discoveries and inventions, modern achievements
and researches have increased our comfort and happiness, peace and
prosperity. The Europeans are civilised people simply because they have
benefited themselves from the scientific education. Their secret of success
is due to this fact. Scientific knowledge makes people utilise the natural
resources of their country and reveals the whole mystery of Nature.
Literature acquaints us with the thoughts, feelings, ideals and aspirations
of others, but science makes us students of Nature. It enable us to see the
sights of Nature with our eyes wide open, hear the sounds with our ears
open, and to be thrilled by its beauty. The beauties and wonders of animals and plants are laid before our eyes. The lilies and the roses do no
mountains, the glories of the sky studded with stars, and the marvels of
wisdom of God. Says Lord Avebury, “Without botany we may admire a
too deep for thoughts. Every flowers is an object lesson in the power and
only appeal to us for their inexpressible beauty, but also give us messages
botanist, on the contrary, when he goes out into the woods or into one of
great man or a beautiful woman in a crowd, but it is as strangers. The
those fairy forests which we call fields, finds himself welcomed by a glad
What is true of botany is true of other branches of science as well. But the
company of friends, every one of which has something interesting to tell
abuse of scientific knowledge is harmful to humanity. The Great World
War shows how terrible a weapon for the destruction of life and property
knowledge affords us material or worldly comfort, but it does not give us
it may be come by its being used for greed and ambition. Mere scientific
spiritual knowledge, rather it leads us far away from the right path. The
right feelings of the heart, the noble virtues of righteousness and charms
of life are all best touched by or come under the scope of literature. This
is not the work of science. Each branch of study thus supplements the
other, and each renders us substantial help in attaining to a comprehensive
understanding of the whole. Those who are eager to establish the
superiority of scientific education over the literary, by pointing to the
wonders of scientific invention and by dilating on the material comforts
which the sciences have conferred on us, fail to recognise the truth that
these discoveries and inventions of science cannot make men happy
without the purer and nobler moral forces and impulses to control and
regulate them. Those, again, who belittle the importance of these
discoveries and inventions as being materialistic, forget that a deeper
knowledge of the mysteries of physical nature gives us a truer insight into
the unity that underlies diversity in Nature. Physicists by increasing their
knowledge of so-called “matter” have been led to doubt its reality, and
have dematerialised the atom and with it the entire universe which the
various atoms compose. The trinity of matter, ether and electricity, out of
which science has hitherto attempted to construct the world, has been
reduced to a single element – the ether (which is not scientific “matter”) in
a state of motion. That the mind and sense are also quasimaterial has the
support of some forms of Western philosophy such as that of Herbert Spencer, for he holds that the universe, whether physical or psychical, is a
play of force which in the case of matter we experience as object. We
affirm that scientific “matter” is an appearance produced by the play of
cosmic force, and that mind itself is a product of the same play.