incompetence if he attempts the discussion but is really incompetent for
it, will be abundantly visible; nobody will be taken in; he will have
plenty of sharp observers and critics to save mankind from that danger.
But the line I am going to follow is, as you will soon discover, so
extremely simple, that perhaps it may be followed without failure even
by one who for a more ambitious line of discussion would be quite
incompetent.

Some of you may possibly remember a phrase of mine which has been the
object of a good deal of comment; an observation to the effect that in
our culture, the aim being _to know ourselves and the world_, we have,
as the means to this end, _to know the best which has been thought and
said in the world._ A man of science, who is also an excellent writer
and the very prince of debaters, Professor Huxley, in a discourse at the
opening of Sir Josiah Mason's College at Birmingham, laying hold of this
phrase, expanded it by quoting some more words of mine, which are these:
"The civilised world is to be regarded as now being, for intellectual
and spiritual purposes, one great confederation, bound to a joint action
and working to a common result; and whose members have for their proper
outfit a knowledge of Greek, Roman, and Eastern antiquity, and of one
another. Special local and temporary advantages being put out of
account, that modern nation will in the intellectual and spiritual
sphere make most progress, which most thoroughly carries out this
programme."

Now on my phrase, thus enlarged, Professor Huxley remarks that when I
speak of the above-mentioned knowledge as enabling us to know ourselves
and the world, I assert _literature_ to contain the materials which
suffice for thus making us know ourselves and the world. But it is not
by any means clear, says he, that after having learned all which ancient