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Our Intellectual Strength and Weakness

Note 1 — I.

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Page 1.—See "Democracy, and Other Addresses," by James Russell Lowell (Boston and New York, 1887) pp. 235–237. The address at the Harvard Anniversary, from which I quote in the commencement of the text, should be carefully read and studied by all those who are interested in education and culture in the Dominion, and do not wish to see the classics superseded by purely scientific and utilitarian theories. "Leave," he said, for instance, "in their traditional pre-eminence those arts that were rightly called liberal; those studies that kindle the imagination, and through it irradiate the reason: those studies that manumitted the modern mind; those in which the brains of the finest temper have found alike their stimulus and their repose, taught by them that the power of intellect is heightened in proportion as it is made gracious by measure and symmetry. Give us science, too, but give, first of all and last of all, the science that ennobles life and makes it generous.... Many-sidedness of culture makes your vision clearer and keener in particulars. For, after all, the noblest definition of Science is that breadth and impartiality of view which liberates the mind from specialties, and enables it to organize whatever we learn, so that it becomes real Knowledge by being brought into true and helpful relation with the rest."

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