SCIENTIFIC CULTURE. 521 



way, but this wrong way is so easy and alluring, that you will most 

 certainly stray into it unless you strive earnestly to keep out of it. 

 Hence I am most anxious to point out to you the right way, and do 

 what I can to keep you in it; and you will find tliat our courses and 

 methods have been devised with this object. 



"When advocating in our mother University of Cambridge, in Old 

 England, the claims of scientific culture, I was pushed with an argu- 

 ment which had very great weight with the eminent English scholars 

 present, and which you will be surprised to learn was regarded as fatal 

 to the success of the science triposes then under debate. The aro-u- 

 ment was, that the experimental sciences could not be made the sub- 

 jects of competitive examinations. Some may smile at such an objec- 

 tion ; but, as viewed from the English stand-point, there was really a 

 great deal in it, and the argument brought out the radical difference 

 between scientific and classical culture. The old method of culture 

 may be said to have culminated in the competitive examinations of the 

 English universities. We have no such examinations here. Success 

 depends not simply on knowing your subject thoroughly, but on hav- 

 ing it at your fingers' ends, and those fingers so agile that they can 

 accomplish not only a prodigious amount of work in a short time, but 

 can do this work with absolute accuracy. For tlie only approach we 

 make to an experience of this kind, we must look to our athletic con- 

 tests. It may of course be doubted whether the ability, once in a 

 man's life, to perform such mental feats, is worth wliat it costs. Still 

 it implies a very high degree of mental culture, and it is perfectly cer- 

 tain that the experimental sciences give no field for that sort of mental 

 prize-fights. It is easy to prepare written examinations which will show 

 whether the students have been faithful to their work, but they cannot 

 be adapted to such competitions as I have described without abandon- 

 ing the true object of science culture. The ability of the scientific 

 student can only be shown by long-continued work at the laboratory- 

 table, and by his success in investigating the problems which Nature 

 presents. 



We have here struck the true key-note of the scientific method. 

 The great object of all our study should be to study Nature, and all 

 our methods should be directed to this one object. This aim alone 

 will ennoble our scholarship as students, and will give dignity to our 

 scientific calling as men of science. It is this high aim, moreover, 

 which vindicates the worth of the mode of culture we have chosen. 

 What is it that ennobles literary culture but the great minds which, 

 through this culture, have honored the nations to whicli they belong? 

 The culture we have chosen is capable of even greater things ; not 

 because science is nobler than art, for both are equally noble ; it is 

 the thought, the conception, which ennobles, and I care not whether it 

 be attained throuirh one kind of exercise of the mental faculties or an- 

 Other ; but we are capable of grander and nobler thoughts than Plato, 



