460 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



to overwhelm its votaries ; as if the man of science of the future were 

 condemned to diminish into a narrower and narrower specialist, as 

 time goes on. 



I am happy to say that I do not think any such catastrophe a neces- 

 sary consequence of the growth of science ; but I do think it is a tend- 

 ency to be feared, and an evil to be most carefully provided against. 

 The man who works away at one corner of Nature, shutting his eyes 

 to all the rest, diminishes his chances of seeing what is to be seen 

 in that corner ; for, as I need hardly remind my present hearers, 

 that which the investigator perceives depends much more on that 

 which lies behind his sense-organs than on the object in front of 

 them. 



It appears to me that the only defense against this tendency to the 

 degeneration of scientific workers lies in the organization and exten- 

 sion of scientific education in such a manner as to secure breadth of 

 culture without superficiality ; and, on the other hand, depth and pre- 

 cision of knowledge without narrowness. 



I think it is quite possible to meet these requirements. There is 

 no reason, in the nature of things, why the student who is destined 

 for a scientific career should not, in the first place, go through a course 

 of instruction such as would insure him a real, that is to say, a prac- 

 tical acquaintance with the elements of each of the great divisions of 

 mathematical and physical science ; nor why this instruction in what 

 (if I may borrow a phrase from medicine) I may call the institutes of 

 science should not be followed up by more special instruction, cover- 

 ing the whole field of that particular division in which the student 

 eventually proposes to become a specialist. I say not only that there 

 is no reason why this should not be done, but, on the ground of prac- 

 tical experience, I venture to add that there is no difficulty in doing it. 

 Some thirty years ago my colleagues and I framed a scheme of instruc- 

 tion on the lines just indicated, for the students of the institution, which 

 has grown into what is now known as the Normal School of Science 

 and Royal School of Mines. We have found no obstacles in the way 

 of carrying the scheme into practice except such as arise, partly, from 

 the limitations of time forced upon us from without ; and, partly, from 

 the extremely defective character of ordinary education. With respect 

 to the first difficulty, we ought, in my judgment, to bestow at least 

 four, or better five, years on the work which has, at present, to be got 

 through in three. And, as regards the second difficulty, we are ham- 

 pered not only by the ignorance of even the rudiments of physical sci- 

 ence, on the part of the students who come to us from ordinary schools, 

 and by their very poor mathematical acquirements, but by the raiser- 

 able character of the so-called literary training which they have un- 

 dergone. 



Nothing would help the man of science of the future to rise to the 

 level of his great enterprise more effectually than certain modifications, 



