5 o 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



THE PHYSICAL LABORATORY IN MODERN EDUCA- 

 TION.* 



By HENRY A. ROWLAND, Ph. D., 



PROFESSOR OF PHYSICS IN JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY. 



FROM the moment we are born into this world down to the day 

 when we leave it, we are called upon every moment to exercise 

 our judgment with respect to matters pertaining to our welfare. While 

 Nature has supplied us with instincts which take the place of reason 

 in our infancy, and which form the basis of action in very many per- 

 sons through life, yet, more and more as the world progresses and as 

 we depart from the age of childhood, we are forced to discriminate 

 between right and wrong, between truth and falsehood. No longer 

 can we shelter ourselves behind those in authority over us, but we 

 must come to the front and each one decide for himself what to believe 

 and how to act in the daily routine and the emergencies of life. This 

 is not given to us as a duty which we can neglect, if we please, but it 

 is that which every man or woman, consciously or unconsciously, must 

 go through with. 



Most persons cut this gordian knot, which they can not untangle, 

 by accepting the opinions which have been taught them and which 

 appear correct to their particular circle of friends and associates ; oth- 

 ers take the opposite extreme, and, with intellectual arrogance, seek 

 to build up their opinions and beliefs from the very foundation, indi- 

 vidually and alone, without help from others. Intermediate between 

 these two extremes comes the man with full respect for the opinions 

 of those around him, and yet with such discrimination that he sees a 

 chance of error in all, and most of all in himself. He has a longing 

 for the truth and is willing to test himself, to test others and to test 

 nature until he finds it. He has the courage of his opinions when 

 thus carefully formed, and is then, but not till then, willing to stand 

 before the world and proclaim what he considers the truth. Like 

 Galileo and Copernicus, he inaugurates a new era in science, or like 

 Luther, in the religious belief of mankind. He neither shrinks within 

 himself at the thought of having an opinion of his own, nor yet be- 

 lieves it to be the only one worth considering in the world ; he is 

 neither crushed with intellectual humility, nor yet exalted with intel- 

 lectual pride ; he sees that the problems of nature and society can be 

 solved, and yet he knows that this can only come about by the com- 

 bined intellect of the world acting through ages of time, and that he, 

 though his intellect were that of Newton, can, at best, do very little 

 toward it. Knowing this, he seeks all the aids in his power to ascer- 



* Reprinted, by permission of the author, from "Johns Hopkins University Circular" 

 for June, 1886. 



