SCIENCE IN EDUCATION 675 



tion with all that is noblest and best in the literatures of the past, for 

 the culture and taste that spring from prolonged contact with the 

 highest models of literary expression, for the widening of our sympa- 

 thies and the vivifying of our imagination by the study of history, 

 the teaching of science has no equivalents. 



Men who have completed their formal education with little or 

 no help from the older learning may be pardoned should they be apt 

 to despise such help and to believe that they can very well dispense 

 with it in the race of life. My first earnest advice to the science 

 students of this college is, not to entertain this belief and to refuse 

 to act on it. Be assured that, in your future career, whatever it may 

 be, you will find in literature a source of solace and refreshment, of 

 strength and encouragement, such as no department of science can 

 give you. There will come times, even to the most enthusiastic 

 among you, when scientific work, in spite of its absorbing interest, 

 grows to be a weariness. At such times as these you will appreciate 

 the value of the literary culture you may have received at school or 

 college. Cherish the literary tastes you have acquired, and devote 

 yourselves sedulously to the further cultivation of them during such 

 intervals of leisure as you may be able to secure. 



Over and above the pleasure which communion with the best 

 books will bring with it, two reasons of a more utilitarian kind may 

 be given to science students why they should seek this communion. 

 Men who have been too exclusively trained in science, or are too 

 much absorbed in its pursuit, are not always the most agreeable mem- 

 bers of society. They are apt to be somewhat angular and profes- 

 sional, contributing little that is interesting to general conversation, 

 save when they get a chance of introducing their own science and 

 its doings. Perhaps the greatest bore I ever met was a man of sci- 

 ence, whose mind and training were so wholly mathematical and 

 physical that he seemed unable to look at the simplest subject save 

 in its physical relations, about which he would discourse till he had 

 long exhausted the patience of the auditor whom he detained. There 

 is no more efficacious remedy for this tendency to what is popularly 

 known as " shop " than the breadth and culture of mind that spring 

 from wide reading in ancient and modern literature. 



The other reason for the advice I offer you is one of which you 

 will hardly, perhaps, appreciate the full force in the present stage 

 of your career. One result of the comparative neglect of the literary 

 side of education by many men of science is conspicuously seen in 

 their literary style. It is true that in our time we have had some 

 eminent scientific workers, who have also been masters of nervous 

 and eloquent English. But it is not less true that the literature of 

 science is burdened with a vast mass of slipshod, ungrammatical, and 



