112 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



an instrument for cultivating the memory, and has the additional 

 advantage of strengthening the perceptive powers too, for in it the 

 eye, the ear, and all the instruments of the senses are trained to 

 observe facts accurately, as they are not trained to so great a degree 

 in language study. It again takes the lead in the cultivation of the 

 pure reason; for it gives grand laws and generalizations already 

 deduced or in process of deduction. " The discovery of these natural 

 laws may be counted among the greatest achievements of the human 

 mind. To follow out the processes by which they were discovered 

 gives the mind its most rigid training, and elevates the tone of 

 thought in many other respects. The intellect becomes self-reliant 

 and yet conscious of its own weak points." Also, in aesthetic devel- 

 opment, scientific education is put foremost. " The true student of 

 Nature and her phenomena ever sees order and symmetry coming 

 out of chaos, and finds the rarest beauty hidden where to the un- 

 aided eye naught but ugliness exists. . . . Can any student, who 

 looks upon the universe with vision thus unobscured, fail to find 

 in his studies the truest aesthetic culture? " But it had been alleged 

 that the scientific courses had been tried in many American colleges 

 and found less fruitful than the classical. In answer to this the 

 author considered the character of most American colleges, the 

 qualifications of many professed teachers and the methods of study, 

 and showed that these, as they actually were, were not competent 

 for the conveyance of genuine scientific instruction. 



By the multiplication of competing colleges putting sectarian 

 interests in the foremost place, the means were divided up and frit- 

 tered away, which, concentrated in one institution, would hardly 

 be enough to enable it to do really effective work. " Each college 

 acts as a drag on all the others. Libraries, cabinets, and faculties 

 are uselessly duplicated. Naturally, one result of this state of affairs 

 is a lowering of educational standards. . . . Since, on account of 

 this foolish division of forces, most of these colleges are inadequately 

 endowed, they are compelled to work short-handed. One professor 

 has frequently several branches to teach. ... In the majority of 

 cases there is a chair of Latin, a chair of Greek, and then — a chair 

 of l Natural Science.' Each linguistic professor is to some degree 

 a specialist; while the one who teaches science is perforce compelled 

 to be a smatterer. He is expected to teach half a dozen dissimilar 

 branches, each one being a life work by itself. He is to be omniscient 

 on about a thousand dollars a year." 



That the character of these institutions, as well as their poverty, 

 was detrimental to the advancement of scientific education was more 

 fully shown in another article on American Colleges vs. American 

 Science, in the ninth volume of the Monthly. The colleges were 



