6 7 6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



clumsy writing, wherein sometimes even the meaning of the authors 

 is left in doubt. Let me impress upon you the obvious duty of not 

 increasing this unwieldy burden. Study the best masters of style, 

 and when once you have made up your minds what you want to 

 say, try to express it in the simplest, clearest, and most graceful lan- 

 guage you can find. 



Remember that, while education is the drawing out and cultiva- 

 tion of all the powers of the mind, no system has yet been devised 

 that will by itself develop with equal success every one of these 

 powers. The system under which we have been trained may have 

 done as much for us as it can do. Each of us is thereafter left to 

 supplement its deficiencies by self-culture. And in the ordinary 

 science instruction of the time one of the most obvious of these in- 

 evitable deficiencies is the undue limitation or neglect of the literary 

 side of education. 



But in the science instruction itself there are dangers regarding 

 which we can not be too watchful. In this college and in all the 

 other well-organized scientific institutions of the country the prin- 

 ciples of science are taught orally and experimentally. Every branch 

 of knowledge is expounded in its bearings on other branches. Its 

 theory is held up as the first great aim of instruction, and its practical 

 applications are made subsequent and subordinate. Divisions of sci- 

 ence are taught here which may have few practical applications, but 

 which are necessary for a comprehensive survey of the whole circle 

 of scientific truth. Now, you may possibly have heard, and in the 

 midst of a busy industrial community you are not unlikely to hear, 

 remarks made in criticism of this system or method of tuition. The 

 importance of scientific training will be frankly acknowledged and 

 even insisted upon, but you will sometimes hear this admission 

 coupled with the proviso that the science must be of a practical kind; 

 must, in short, be just such and no other as will fit young men to 

 turn it to practical use in the manufactures or industries to which 

 they may be summoned. The critics who make this limitation boast 

 that they are practical men, and that in their opinion theory is useless 

 or worse for the main purposes for which they would encourage and 

 support a great scientific school. 



Now I am quite sure that those science students who have passed 

 even a single session in Mason College can see for themselves the 

 utter fallacy of such statements and the injury that would be done 

 to the practical usefulness of this institution and to the general prog- 

 ress of the industrial applications of science if such short-sighted 

 views were ever carried into effect. There can be no thorough, ade- 

 quate, and effective training in science unless it be based on a compre- 

 hensive study of facts and principles, altogether apart from any 



