Another reason which for many years barred the natural sciences from influencing our general culture was the want of historical prestige. A young man conscious of his growing strength imagines that he does not need the advice of mature experience; he talks frequently and glibly of experience, but his life has as yet been too short to warrant the right to such boasting. It is just this experience of mature age which in science must find its analogon in historical prestige. The historico-philological sciences have decidedly the advantage in this respect. And yet the natural sciences, although the younger sister, have made more history during the last one hundred years than the others in one thousand, and the study of this history does not find its equal anywhere in point of interest and intensity. Moreover, it contains the prerequisites for the proper criterion on the basis of which a true comparison with the other cultural elements of our age is possible. Here lies the chief significance of the study of the natural sciences which makes them the mental sciences par excellence. The multitude of the most common facts by which these sciences have enriched human culture and thought offers a unique contemplation. By culture I do not mean knowledge merely, but rather the ability to inspire the dead matter of knowledge with the forces and forms of life; it is not something visible, some polish or codex of manners, but something invisible, a power effectual and effective in the correct grasp of the forceful elements that lie at the base of all the situations of life.

After having thus briefly discussed the conflicting tendencies in our modern intellectual life, I pass on to the inquiry into the changes which the new scientific thinking is bringing about in the accepted ideas of general culture. We hear and read a great deal about overspecialization and its dissipating consequences. Natural science is charged with being the cause of it, and its educational value for general culture is, therefore, by many counted naught. However, the study of the minute is the fundamental prerequisite for physical investigations. Should we then not try to make this factor valuable for general culture? How? Detail-research offers, upon a lower plane, the constant

stimulus not only to fortify and to deepen already existing views, but also to change and to improve them; it presents to the realm of general culture the possibility of even larger problems and further mental advances. For purposes of education or in cases of mental inferiority the stimulus of authority is necessary, but on the highest plane of human development motives and incentives should rise in their natural order from below upward, from the imperfect to the perfect; this process is absolutely necessary for the progressive growth of general culture in the life of the individual, otherwise the conditions requisite for self-discipline and self-education are seriously weakened.

Some time ago the disciples of the old idea of general culture were greatly delighted over the appearance of a book, “Rembrandt als Erzieher," which aroused intense interest in the educational world on both sides of the Atlantic, and therefore had an enormous sale and was translated into several languages. Its author emphasizes the sphere of art as the greatest educator over against the sciences. However, his position was, in the course of time, felt to be untenable. Truly artistic ability is very rare among men, while intellectual training leaves its impress even upon very mediocre minds; art generalized would produce a frightful increase of quacks. Scientific thinking, on the other hand, shows us life as well as knowledge from many points of view. Analytical and synthetic thinking permit to judge every phenomenon from a different point of view; it is characteristic of such thinking to observe with different eyes, to see the different sides of one and the same thing simultaneously; how important, then, to make use of this ability for purposes of general culture! It is of the utmost importance to learn to observe everything from various standpoints, for none has an absolutely permanent value; each is only important for a definite purpose. Newton differed from Goethe in his interpretation of colors. He proceeded from a physical, Goethe from a psychological, point of view. Both were correct, but Goethe's attack on Newton was a mistake, because he did not possess the ability to judge the correctness of the other side. It is, therefore, incongruous to strive

after a system of general culture in the sense of universality. "We only know in part," and every part has its value; an old ruin is of more importance than a completely equipped air castle. But just as fallacious as the intellectual estimate placed upon the value of the complete, i. e., the whole, is the estimate of unity. Science teaches that every objective existence is the simultaneous result of several factors and that inquiry must be confined to one factor at a time. A unifying principle of culture may be valuable for purposes of external education, but it limits one's horizon, it impedes all further development when this education has reached its termination and self-education begins in all its intensity in the mature years of a man's life. Only the moral side of the mind exhibits absolute unity but not the intellectual, the latter only shows tendencies towards such unity. Religion by virtue of its moral unifying power becomes the guiding star and firm trust of man whenever he becomes conscious of his moral helplessness, when knowledge and its power fail. Haeckel's "Monism" is therefore an absurdity; he tries to establish a bond between religion and science by making a purely intellectual facWe make tor the unifying principle of two different spheres. the same mistake when we confound these same two factors in in our interpretation of general culture. There is indeed a mutual interrelation between the two, but it is the chief mistake of our whole past educational history to force them into one and the same channel. The more the church tried to control the intellectual development, the greater became the detriment to the moral forces of the church on account of the ever-increasing deceptions which naturally arose from this forced relation. The cure lay in the admission that the progressive development of the intellect must be granted its influence upon the moral forces of the church. But, vice versa, intellectual inquiry is not possible without will power or moral force,-even general culture must rest upon it. The recognition of this mutual relation largely belongs to the influence of two factors so highly developed by modern scientific methods, viz., that of analysis and synthesis or isolation and superposition. The process of isolation constitutes the concentration of

one's attention upon one property of an object at a time, the idea of superposition considers the individual influences of different forces upon an object in the light of their common effect; both processes are illustrated by the theorem of the "parallelogram of forces." Our life is too short to permit investigations based upon the latter principle, the division of labor with all its onesidedness forms, however, a welcome substitute. Every honest worker concentrates his efforts upon the specialty which consti tutes his life work. He interprets life from his point of view. Here lies the passion of his heart. This is especially true of the scientific investigator. The heart often tries to anticipate the result of the investigation, but when these results do not come up to the expectations, the heart submits to the dictates of truth. The history of our great discoveries is largely a history of hearttraining, a process of purification, which after endless experiments and tests ends in the glorification of truth and brings with it a gradual moulding of character, for it demands the oft-repeated surrender of cherished desires and expectations, it gradually eliminates that rigid intolerance which only trusts its own development and experience and despises every foreign interference, which is always ready to contradict but never to acknowledge an The application of this principle of superposition to the intellectual life of the age is still a desideratum in modern culture, otherwise we would not witness the deplorable spectacle of so much hatred and persecution in various quarters. But the dawn of a better day is not far distant.

error.

I have raised these formal questions because they are so closely allied to our traditional thinking at Franklin and Marshall Col lege. The great scientific deeds and discoveries dazzle the beholder; many bow to them as to a higher power, which is incomprehensible to them. But more valuable than the loud voice of victory and of discovery is to the thinking layman the quiet un pretentious road which led to it. at least an insight into it, seems especially adapted to bridge over the chasm yawning so wide between the contending parties in our modern intellectual life. With this expectation we hope to open wide the doors of our new Science Building.

The knowledge of this road, or

VII.

EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT.

EXEGESIS AND PREACHING.

Hyperius, the founder of Reformed homiletics, defines a sermon as a popular interpretation of the sacred Scriptures. This definition is valuable, as it subordinates the sermon distinctly to the authority of Scripture, in opposition to the practice of the Catholic Church, especially during the middle ages, in which preaching scarcely had any relation to Scripture. But it is after all not a satisfactory definition; for interpetation, in the ordinary sense, is not the proper business of the preacher, but of the exegete or commentator. The business of the preacher is to apply the truth of Scripture to the various intellectual, moral, and spiritual wants of the people to whom he is speaking. After having ascertained the original meaning of any passage of Scripture, the task of the preacher is to show the meaning which it has for the particular congregation whom he is now addressing. To this end the preacher must understand, not only the meaning which Scripture had for its original writers and readers, but also the moral and spiritual condition of those to whom he is preaching; and he must be able to make the application of that meaning to the present condition of the men before him in order to their spiritual instruction and edification. To do this is preach

ing.

The interpretation of any passage of Scripture, on the other hand, or the ascertainment of its original sense, that is, the sense which it had for the writer and his original readers, is the task of the exegete. In the interest of Christian theology, and of correct homiletical practice too, it must be assumed that any passage of Scripture can have but one true sense, and that this is the literal or philological sense, the sense intended by the writer and accepted by his original readers. It has been said that, be

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