SCIENCE IN EDUCATION. 683 



the laboratory how absolutely essential this condition is for scientific 

 investigation. We are all supposed to make the ascertainment of 

 the truth our chief aim, but we do not all take the same trouble to 

 attain it. Accuracy involves labor, and every man is not gifted with 

 an infinite capacity for taking pains. Inexactness of observation is 

 sure sooner or later to be detected, and to be visited on the head of 

 the man who commits it. If his observations are incorrect, the con- 

 clusions he has drawn from them may be vitiated. Thus all the toil 

 he has endured in a research may be rendered of no avail, and the 

 reputation he might have gained is not only lost but replaced by dis- 

 credit. It is quite true that absolute accuracy is often unattainable; 

 you can only approach it. But the greater the exertion you make 

 to reach it, the greater will be the success of your investigations. 

 The effort after accuracy will be transferred from your scientific 

 work to your everyday life and become a habit of mind, advan- 

 tageous both to yourselves and to society at large. 



In the next place, I would set thoroughness, which is closely 

 akin to accuracy. Again, your training here has shown you how 

 needful it is in scientific research to adopt thorough and exhaustive 

 methods of procedure. The conditions to be taken into account are 

 so numerous and complex, the possible combinations so manifold, 

 before a satisfactory conclusion can be reached. A laborious collec- 

 tion of facts must be made. Each supposed fact must be sifted out 

 and weighed. The evidence must be gone over again and yet again, 

 each link in its chain being scrupulously tested. The deduction to 

 which the evidence may seem to point must be closely and impar- 

 tially scrutinized, every other conceivable explanation of the facts 

 being frankly and fully considered. Obviously the man whose edu- 

 cation has inured him to the cultivation of a mental habit of this 

 kind is admirably equipped for success in any walk in life which he 

 may be called upon to enter. The accuracy and thoroughness which 

 you have learned to appreciate and practice at college must never be 

 dropped in later years. Carry them with you as watchwords, and 

 make them characteristic of all your undertakings. 



In the third place, we may take breadth. At the outset of your 

 scientific education you were doubtless profoundly impressed by the 

 multiplicity of detail which met your eye in every department of 

 natural knowledge. When you entered upon the study of one of 

 these departments, you felt, perhaps, almost overpowered and be- 

 wildered by the vast mass of facts with which you had to make 

 acquaintance. And yet as your training advanced, you gradually 

 came to see that the infinite variety of phenomena could all be mar- 

 shaled, according to definite laws, into groups and series. You were 

 led to look beyond the details to the great principles that underlie 



