i68 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Latin and Greek, Nevertheless, I am the last person to question the 

 importance of genuine literary education, or to suppose that intellectual 

 culture can be complete without it. An exclusively scientific training 

 will bring about a mental twist as surely as an exclusive literary train- 

 ing. The value of the cargo does not compensate for a ship's being 

 out of trim ; and I should be very sorry to think that the Scientific 

 College Avould turn out none but lop-sided men. There is no need, 

 however that such a catastrophe should happen. Instruction in Eng- 

 lish, French, and German is provided, and thus the three greatest lit- 

 eratures of the modern world are made accessible to the student. 

 French and German, and especially the latter language, are absolutely 

 indispensable to those who desire full knowledge in any department of 

 science. But, even supposing that the knowledge of these languages 

 acquired is not more than sufiicient for purely scientific purposes, every 

 Englishman has, in his native tongue, an almost perfect instrument of 

 literary expression ; and, in his own literature, models of every kind 

 of literary excellence. If an Englishman can not get literary culture 

 out of his Bible, his Shakespeare, his Milton, neither, in my belief, will 

 the profoundest study of Homer and Sophocles, Virgil and Horace, 

 give it to him. 



Thus, since the constitution of the college makes sufiicient provi- 

 sion for literary as well as for scientific education, and since artistic 

 instruction is also contemplated, it seems to me that a fairly complete 

 culture is oflrered to all who are willing to take advantage of it. 



But I am not sure but that at this point the "practical" man, 

 scotched but not slain, may ask what all this talk about culture has to 

 do with an institution whose object is defined to be "to promote the 

 prosperity of the manufactures and the industry of the country," He 

 may suggest that what is wanted for this end is not culture, nor even 

 a purely scientific discipline, but simply a knowledge of applied science. 

 I often wish that this phrase, " applied science," had never been invent- 

 ed. For it suggests that there is a sort of scientific knowledge of 

 direct practical use, which can be studied apart from another sort of 

 scientific knowledge, which is of no practical utility, and which is 

 termed " pure science." But there is no more complete fallacy than 

 this. What people call applied science is nothing but the application 

 of pure science to particular classes of problems. It consists of de- 

 ductions from those general principles, established by reasoning and 

 observation, which constitute pure science. No one can safely make 

 these deductions until he has a firm grasp of the principles ; and he 

 can obtain that grasp only by personal experience of the processes of 

 observation and of reasoning on which they are founded. 



Almost all the processes employed in the arts and manufactures 

 fall within the range either of physics or of chemistry. In order to 

 improve them, one must thoroughly understand them ; and no one 

 has a chance of really understanding them who has not obtained that 



