ACADEMIC EFFICIENCY 491 



set your leg if you broke it, or bridge the Mississippi if you wanted to 

 cross it. It would be an extremely difficult question to decide, but you 

 would have to do it somehow if you wanted to solve this problem 

 numerically. Then if you confined your attention to professional 

 schools you would need to estimate the relative value to the community 

 of a doctor, lawyer, clergyman or engineer, and so on. In doing this 

 you would necessarily take into account local needs and local peculiari- 

 ties. You would have to consider, as a single sample of what I mean, 

 whether there was a real demand in the community for an increased 

 number of doctors, and so with the other professions. 



Here to-day we are celebrating the foundation of buildings which 

 are to be devoted to science and its applications, and so it would seem 

 natural to consider that kind of educational effort somewhat more 

 minutely. You would have to begin with deciding on the usefulness 

 to the community of an education such as is being given in this insti- 

 tution, and in particular in this school of engineering where men are 

 trained in the sciences for the service of the state. Now, it is such a 

 commonplace to-day that science has revolutionized the world that I 

 shall not weary you with attempting to demonstrate that fact. At the 

 same time I should like to say in passing that, like many another com- 

 monplace, it is too often neglected in actual practise. It seems that 

 individuals and states in making provisions for education constantly 

 fail to recognize how enormously important to the welfare of the state 

 it is that men should be trained in science, and in its application to 

 every branch of practical life. "We live in an age preeminently scien- 

 tific, and if we are not able to cope with a problem scientifically we 

 can not cope with it at all. But not only is a scientific training essen- 

 tial anywhere to any country to-day, it is, I think, peculiarly important 

 in this country at this particular time. It seems to me that one of the 

 great dangers of our democracy is the prevalence of the idea that one 

 man is as good as another. It is an idea founded on an erroneous 

 theory of democracy and one that appears utterly false from a scientific 

 point of view. It too often gives support to the doctrine that any man 

 will do for any position that he is clever enough to get. Nothing has 

 surprised me more in moving about this country than to see countless 

 instances of men who have had no adequate scientific training employed 

 in the service of cities and of states, to do work that really needs a very 

 considerable scientific equipment. They are amateurs doing the work 

 of professionals. We have suffered too much at the hands of these 

 amateurs, and we must remove them — root and branch. We must 

 educate our communities in such a way that it will shock their moral 

 sense to see a man, let us say, administering a department of public 

 health who knows little or nothing of biology and bacteriology or any 

 of the other fundamental sciences that enter into the very heart of his 



