322 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



have glowed with enthusiasm over experiment stations and a Carnegie 

 Institution ! 



The fourth point is more distinctly educational : ' neglect of proper 

 supervision or diligent inquiry into the course of studies, with a view 

 to a thorough reformation of such parts as are ill-suited to the age, 

 or of unwise institution.' Bacon gives two specimens of faults in 

 the existing course of study: first, that scholars are inducted too early 

 into logic and rhetoric; and second, that invention and memory are 

 not exercised together. These are evidently mentioned rather to indi- 

 cate the kind of reforms which Bacon here intends, than for any 

 peculiar importance attaching to them. Perhaps nothing is more 

 characteristic of modern education than just this ' diligent inquiry 

 into the course of study ' which Bacon recommends ; not indeed that 

 we may yet count ourselves to have attained to perfection in the matter 

 of actual reformation, nor to have yet cast off all that was fit only for 

 the ' obscure times ' in which our curricula were first formed. But 

 throughout the civilized world those responsible for the training of the 

 young — teachers, parents and statesmen — are giving themselves with 

 resolute purpose to the discovery and ordering of the best means of 

 education, for all ages from infancy to maturity. 



The next defect is ' the little sympathy and correspondence which 

 exists between colleges and universities, as well throughout Europe as in 

 the same state and kingdom.' Evidently the possession of a common 

 academic language did not insure complete academic harmony and 

 -cooperation ! One can not doubt that Bacon would have seen many 

 fulfilments of this desire of his in modern university life : learned 

 ^societies, associations of colleges and schools, conferences, philosophical 

 ; and scientific journals, scientific congresses at international expositions, 

 and the like. Perhaps the ceremonies of inducting a president of a 

 university into his office would have seemed to him particularly to show 

 forth ' a fraternity of learning and illumination, relating to that 

 paternity which is attributed to God, who is called the Father of lights.' 

 " Lastly," says Bacon, " I may lament that no fit men have been 

 engaged to forward those sciences which yet remain in an unfinished 

 state." Lastly, indeed, but not least; rather may we believe that this 

 forwarding of the unfinished sciences lay nearest of all to the heart 

 of the author of the Instauration Magna, a work undertaken, he tells 

 us, to ' perform, as it were, a lustrum of the sciences, and to take 

 account of what have been prosecuted and what omitted.' None of 

 Bacon's admonitions have been more fully heeded by the universities 

 most worthy of the name ; indeed it has come to be a mark of a genuine 

 university that its teachers should be all ' fit men to forward the un- 

 finished sciences ' — in other words, investigators. How vast has been 

 the actual progress in the lustrum of the sciences may perhaps best 



