about because the position of men of science and art is a privileged
one, because art and science (in our day), in our world, are not at
all a rational occupation of all mankind without exception, exerting
their best powers for the service of art and science, but an
occupation of a restricted circle of people holding a monopoly of
these industries, and entitling themselves men of art and science,
and who have, therefore, perverted the very idea of art and science,
and have lost all the meaning of their vocation, and who are only
concerned in amusing and rescuing from crushing ennui their tiny
circle of idle mouths.

Ever since men have existed, they have always had science and art in
the simplest and broadest sense of the term. Science, in the sense
of the whole of knowledge acquired by mankind, exists and always has
existed, and life without it is not conceivable; and there is no
possibility of either attacking or defending science, taken in this
sense.

But the point lies here,--that the scope of the knowledge of all
mankind as a whole is so multifarious, ranging from the knowledge of
how to extract iron to the knowledge of the movements of the
planets, that man loses himself in this multitude of existing
knowledge,--knowledge capable of ENDLESS possibilities, if he have
no guiding thread, by the aid of which he can classify this
knowledge, and arrange the branches according to the degrees of
their significance and importance.

Before a man undertakes to learn any thing whatever, he must make up
his mind that that branch of knowledge is of weight to him, and of
more weight and importance than the countless other objects of study