672 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



It is true that scientific education may fail quite as dismally 

 as the classical has in times past if the grand generalizations of 

 science are to be obscured by its manifold details. Emerson has 

 somewhere said, " Men are so prone to mistake the means for the 

 end that even natural history has its pedants who mistake classi- 

 fication for science/' As a detached fact, the knowledge that 

 water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen has no value. It is 

 only when brought into relation with other chemical facts that it 

 becomes significant. The statement found in elementary physical 

 geographies and geologies that nine hundred and seventy-seven 

 thousandths of the earth's crust consist of the nine elements 

 oxygen, silicon, aluminium, calcium, magnesium, sodium, potas- 

 sium, iron, and carbon carries very little instruction with it un- 

 less the children know the substances of which these names are 

 the symbols. Mere classification is a weariness of the flesh. Sci- 

 ence has no greater lesson to teach than roots and case endings 

 have, unless it be linked to human life. Nor must it be pursued 

 externally ; it must touch our own experience, and its truths be- 

 come a part of us, to be remembered because they can not be for- 

 gotten. This is knowledge, and nothing less than this deserves 

 the name. 



It is not so difficult to make even the more profound scientific 

 studies touch intimately our daily life as one would imagine who 

 has been taught to mistake classification for science. It is true 

 that the multitude of objects which come within the field of sci- 

 entific research require for their distinction a nomenclature which 

 is not brief, but the student needs only a small part of it in the 

 beginning. His vocabulary will grow with the using. In his 

 "American Addresses" Prof. Huxley says, "For the purpose of 

 getting a definite knowledge of what constitutes the leading- 

 modifications of animal and plant life, it is not needful to ex- 

 amine more than a comparatively small number of animals and 

 plants." This, indeed, is the distinctive method of science. The 

 student is made to advance from the particular to the general. 

 The result justifies the method. By knowing a few things well, 

 one knows everything, for one can not know even a few things 

 well without having discovered by that very study the essential 

 unity underlying all things. Our great geologists are not those 

 who have " done " the earth, but rather those who have patiently 

 and persistently studied a very small corner of it. To this rational 

 mode of study all sciences are unmistakably coming. From its 

 very nature, chemistry has been among the last to fall into line. 

 It has been held, and in most quarters is still held, that the num- 

 ber of substances studied by the chemist should be limited only 

 by the span of life. In accordance with this view, the young stu- 

 dent, instead of being allowed to make friends with a few of the 



