684 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



them and bind them into a harmonious and organic whole. With 

 the help of a guiding system of classification, you were able to see 

 the connection between the separate facts, to arrange them according 

 to their mutual relations, and thus to ascend to the great general laws 

 under which the material world has been constructed. With all 

 attainable thoroughness in the mastery of detail, you have been taught 

 to combine a breadth of treatment which enables you to find and 

 keep a leading clew even through the midst of what might seem a 

 tangled web of confusion. There are some men who can not see the 

 wood for the trees, and who consequently can never attain great suc- 

 cess in scientific investigation. Let it be your aim to master fully 

 the details of the tree, and yet to maintain such a breadth of vision 

 as will enable you to embrace the whole forest within your ken. I 

 need not enlarge on the practical value of this mental habit in every- 

 day life, nor point out the excellent manner in which a scientific 

 education tends to develop it. 



In the fourth place, I would inculcate the habit of wide reading 

 in scientific literature. Although the progress of science is now too 

 rapid for any man to keep pace with the advance of all its depart- 

 ments, you should try to hold yourselves in touch with at least the 

 main results arrived at in other branches than your own; while, in 

 that branch itself, it should be your constant aim to watch every 

 onward step that is taken by others, and not to fall behind the van. 

 This task you will find to be no light one. Even were it confined to 

 a survey of the march of science in your own country, it would be 

 arduous enough to engage much of your time. But science belongs 

 to no country, and continues its onward advance all over the globe. 

 If you would keep yourselves informed regarding this progress in 

 other countries, as you are bound to do if you would not willingly be 

 left behind, you will need to follow the scientific literature of those 

 countries. You must be able to read at least French and German. 

 You will find in these languages a vast amount of scientific work 

 relating to your own department, and to this accumulated pile of 

 published material the journals of every month continue to add. In 

 many ways it is a misfortune that the laterature of science increases 

 so fast; but we must take the evil with the good. Practice will 

 eventually enable you to form a shrewd judgment as to which authors 

 or papers you may skip without serious danger of losing any valuable 

 fact or useful suggestion. 



In the fifth place, let me plead for the virtue of patience. In a 

 scientific career we encounter two dangers, for the avoidance of which 

 patience is our best support and guide. When life is young and en- 

 thusiasm is boundless; when from the details which we may have 

 laboriously gathered together we seem to catch sight of some new 



