i 7 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tions in geology ; and with how much more of justice might that line 

 of Pope 



How sweet an Ovid Murray was our boast ! 



have been applied to Tyndall than to Lord Mansfield, had Tyndall also 

 cultivated the muses ! And yet it is safe to say that neither Hugh 

 Miller nor Tyndall, by rivaling some of the first poets of the day, 

 would have acquired as much honor, and, what is of far more impor- 

 tance, would have been of as much service to the world, as in filling so 

 worthily and performing so honestly the respective spheres of scientific 

 labor assigned to each of them. 



Besides opening up such an avenue to men of real genius, the pur- 

 suit of science, when properly understood, is far more attractive and 

 more in harmony with their tastes than can possibly be the cultivation 

 of an art already touched by the hand of decay, and passing into the 

 limbo of faded and effete systems. In the pursuit of science we go in 

 quest of natural laws that there is every reason for believing are almost 

 innumerable and inexhaustible ; in poetry, the search is for phantoms 

 of the imagination which, ten to one, have already flitted across other 

 minds and been aj>propriated by them. In science, we search for the 

 real, oftentimes more wonderful and beautiful than the most splendid 

 visions ; in poetry we search for the ideal, which, if it be new, now 

 almost impossible, fails to command admiration, unless it be set before 

 us in the most pleasing colors, and in a style of the highest finish. 

 This elaborate toilet being unnecessary, though admissible to some 

 extent in the treatment of scientific subjects, more range is given to 

 the reason and less to the discursive faculties. And herein lies one of 

 the chief advantages of the scientific method. While giving sufficient 

 rein to the imagination to keep it in healthy exercise, it makes use of 

 the reflective and perceptive powers in an eminent degree. Hence it 

 engenders the greatest strength and breadth of the intellect ; and it is 

 no exaggeration to say that, if all other methods were abandoned, the 

 study of science alone is capable of raising the mind to the loftiest 

 possible standard of development. 



Sooner or later educational institutions must take notice of this 

 fact, and give it the heed its vast importance deserves. It seems im- 

 possible that a few narrow-minded patrons and disciples of the old 

 system, watching at the gates, should much longer shut out from our 

 seminaries of learning that great herald of freedom, of reform, and of 

 progress, panoplied in the armor of truth, who has already dethroned 

 so many idols of the forum, the pulpit, and the market-place, and who 

 s.tands ready, on entering these seminaries, to perform a similar lustra- 

 tion. And nothing needs it more. Palsied almost by a regime which 

 administers public instruction on pretty much the same plan upon 

 which wars are conducted in some of the countries of the Old World 

 that is, without adopting either the new discipline or the new arms 



