26o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



To present our problem definitely at the outset, I submit the fol- 

 lowing proposition : The intellectual culture derived through standard- 

 ized branches of education, as mathematics and Latin, for example, 

 instead of having a general mental economy for the innumerable young 

 men and women who study them, in reality becomes parasitic in the 

 nervous and mental life, and thus is a cause of wasted energy and, pos- 

 sibly, of disease. This proposition has its proper qualification, of course, 

 in all cases where such intellectual culture is so related to the functions 

 of life that it can be utilized. There are two questions that confront 

 us in such a proposition : ( 1 ) Is culture, unused for the specific func- 

 tion that called it into being, of no economy in performing other func- 

 tions? And (2) is such culture, therefore, parasitic and wasteful of 

 human energy? As has already been pointed out in connection with 

 physical culture, it has long been assumed, and is still generally as- 

 sumed, that culture acquired through any given discipline becomes a 

 general fund of energy or skill, transferable to other organs and func- 

 tions. And yet there has never been any really critical evidence in 

 support of such an assumption. The belief in a hierarchy of culture- 

 values, which has standardized the various branches of our academic 

 curricula, like many other beliefs relating to the world of mind and 

 the world of matter, belongs to the category of the naive, the uncritical 

 and the prejudiced. In most of the learned decisions upon the con- 

 stitution of this hierarchy, the judge, the advocates, and the jury have 

 merely reflected the nature of their own training, and more especially 

 the interests of their own calling. But we are now in a position to 

 submit this question to the test of exact experiments. This has been 

 done repeatedly within the last few years by experimental psychologists. 

 Among such psychologists may be mentioned James, Gilbert, Fracker, 

 Thorndike, Woodworth, Judd, Bair, Volkmann and Scripture. The 

 net result of these men's studies may be stated in the words of Professor 

 Thorndike, of Columbia University: 



A change in one function alters any other only in so far as the two func- 

 tions have as factors identical elements. The change in the second function is 

 in amount that due to the change in the elements common to it and the first. 

 . . . Improvement in any single mental function need not improve the ability 

 in functions commonly called by the same name. It may injure it. Improve- 

 ment in any single mental function rarely brings about equal improvement in 

 any other function, no matter how similar, for the working of every mental 

 function-group is conditioned by the nature of the data in each particular case. 1 



This is direct experimental evidence, and it is fairly conclusive 

 against at least much of the indiscriminate championship of the general 

 culture values of special subjects, like mathematics and the classical 

 languages. Neurology, moreover, supplies additional indirect evidence 

 no less conclusive to those familiar with the histology of the brain. 



1 " Educational Psychology," Chapter VIII. 



