THE 



POPULAR SGIEl^OE 

 MONTHLY. 



SEPTEMBER, 1875. 



SCIENTIFIC CULTUEE.' 



By JOSIAH p. COOKE, Jr. 



PROFESSOR OF CHEMISTRY AND MINERALOGY IN HARVARD COLLEGE. 



TOU have come together this morning to begin various element- 

 ary courses of instruction in chemistry and mineralogy. As I 

 have been informed, most of you are teachers by profession, and your 

 chief object is to become acquainted with the experimental methods 

 of teaching physical science, and to gain the advantages in your study 

 which the large apparatus of this university is capable of affording. 

 In all this I hope you will not be disapijointed. You, as teachers, 

 know perfectly well that success must depend, first of all, on your 

 own efforts ; but, since the methods of studying Nature are so differ- 

 ent from those with which you are familiar in literary studies, I feel 

 that the best service I can render, in this introductory address, is to 

 state, as clearly as I can, the great objects which should be kept in 

 view in the courses on which you are now entering. 



By your very attendance on these courses you have given the 

 strongest evidence of your appreciation of the value of chemical stud- 

 ies as a part of the system of education, and let me say, in the first 

 place, thatyou have not overvalued their importance. The elementary 

 principles and more conspicuous facts of chemistry are so intimately 

 associated with the experience of every-day life, and find such im- 

 portant applications in the useful arts, that no man at the present day 

 can be regarded as educated who is ignorant of them. Not to know 

 why the fire burns, or how the sulphur-trade affects the industries of 

 the world, will be regarded, by the generation of men among whom 

 your pupils will have to win their places in society, as a greater mark 

 of ignorance than a false quantity in Latin prosody or a solecism in 

 grammar. Moreover, I need not tell you that physical science has 

 become a great power in the world. Indeed, after religion, it is the 



1 An Address delivered July 7, IS15, at the opening of the Summer Courses of In- 

 struction in Chemistry, at Harvard University 

 VOL. VIZ. 33 



