THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE. 



375 



THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE. 



THE BOSTON MEETING OF THE 



NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL 



ASSOCIATION. 



It is usual for each meeting of the 

 National Educational Association to 

 show an attendance and to claim a 

 success surpassing its predecessors, 

 but the recent Boston meeting estab- 

 lished a record that has not hitherto 

 been approached and that will not 

 soon be challenged. It is said that 

 there was a registration of thirty 

 thousand, an assemblage of teachers 

 larger than the world has hitherto 

 seen. Boston is no longer without 

 rival as an intellectual center, but its 

 preeminence in the history of educa- 

 tion is maintained, and the intellec- 

 tual and educational interests of the 

 city are not submerged and hidden to 

 such an extent as is the case in New 

 York, Washington, Philadelphia and 

 Chicago. It is thus the city which 

 has the most to attract a great con- 

 vention of teachers. 



The meetings of the National Edu- 

 cational Association are, in a large 

 measure, an excursion or picnic, the 

 interest of the city and the journey 

 counting for more than the program. 

 There are few or no sessions in tho 

 afternoon, not more than half the 

 members attend the sectional meetings 

 in the morning, and not more than one 

 tenth the general evening sessions 

 after the first day. This is quite as 

 it should be, for the teachers from all 

 over the country gain much from 

 travel, sightseeing and social exchange, 

 whereas the programs do a good deal 

 of threshing over of old straw. It is, 

 however, a great stimulus for these 

 teachers to see and hear their leaders; 

 and it was worth going to Boston to 

 listen to the president of the associa- 



tion. President Eliot, of Harvard Uni- 

 versity, who is without peer as a pre- 

 siding officer and speaker. 



In his presidential address entitled 

 ' The New Definition of the Cultivated 

 Man,' Dr. Eliot — who, it may be called 

 to mind, was a professor of chemistry 

 before he became the greatest college 

 president and educational leader of 

 the country — laid stress on the fact 

 that the scientific method has been the 

 means of the wonderful widening of 

 the intellect that has occurred during 

 the past hundred years and is as neces- 

 sary for culture as are the humanities ; 

 but no special language or literature, 

 such as Latin or Greek, is now essen- 



tial. 



English 



having become incom- 



parably the most extensive and various 

 and the noblest of literatures. After 

 referring to a work of Zola's^ Dr. 

 Eliot said: 



Contrast this kind of constructive 

 imagination with the kind which con- 

 ceived the great wells sunk in the solid 

 rock below Niagara that contain the 

 turbines that drive the dynamos, that 

 generate the electric force that turns 

 thousands of wheels and lights thou- 

 sands of lamps over hundreds of square 

 miles of adjoining territory; or with 

 tlie kind which conceives the sending 

 of human thoughts across three thou- 

 sand miles of stormy sea instantane- 

 ously on nothing more substantial 

 than ethereal waves. There is going 

 to be room in the hearts of twentieth 

 century men for a high admiration of 

 these kinds of imagination, as well a& 

 for that of the poet, artist or drama- 

 tist. It is one lesson of the nineteenth 

 century, then, that in every field of 

 human knowledge the constructive im- 

 agination finds play — in literature, in 

 history, in theology, in anthropology 

 and in the whole field of physical and 

 biological research. That great cen- 

 tury has taught us that, on the whole, 

 the scientific imagination is quite as 

 productive for human service as the 



