THE OLD HUMANITIES AND THE NEW SCIENCE: The Presidential Address delivered before the Classical Association at Oxford, May, 1919

Abstract

EARLY in the sixteentli century a literary joke sent in- extinguislhable laughter tlhrouglh the learned circles of Europe.The Epistolae Ob8curorn?nVirornm is great -literature, to wlichl I refer for two reasons-its standard is an exact gauge of my scholarsllip, and h.adMagister Nostrandus Ortuinus Gratius of Cologne, to whom m03t of the letters are addressed, been asked to join that wicked Erfurt Circle, lie could not hlave been inore surprised than I was to receive a gracious invitation to preside over this gathering of British scholars.I felt to lhave been sailina under false colours to have ever, by pen or tonage, suggested the possession of even the traditional small Latin and less (xreek.Relieved by the assurance that in alternate years the qualification of your Presideut was an interest in education and literature, I gladly accepted, not, lhowever, without such anticipatory qualms as afflict an To have lived riglht tlhrough an epoch rnatchled only by two in, the story of tlle race, to lhave shared in its longstruggle, to have witnessed its fiuial victory (and in lly own case, to be left, I trust, witli wit enough to realize its significance)-to lhave done this lhas been a wonderful privilege.to hiave outgrown age-old theories of man and of nature, to have seen west separated from east in tl]e * I am sorry to have seen Sargent's picture," GasNed," in this year's Academr.It haunts the mind like a nightmare.

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