758 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



has not yet been written, and can only be known to one who is 

 well grounded, in modern psychology. 



At the outset I spoke of education as fitting a man for his en- 

 vironment. Every man ought to know what kind of a universe 

 he is in, what his relations to it are, what and where invariable 

 conditions are imposed, what in the nature of things is possible 

 and what impossible, within what limits all his achievements 

 must be, and hence what ideals he may consistently cherish that 

 his work may not be in vain. It hardly needs to be said that 

 neither literature nor art nor history nor theology can acquaint a 

 man with these. Only science can do it science not as a mass of 

 facts, but as a body of relations. If there be anything that the 

 ordinary man is markedly deficient in, and which the best school- 

 ing has not added to his mental equipment, it is his failure to see 

 the necessities of relation. Exercises in logic and the study of 

 mathematics have been supposed to qualify a man to be logical, 

 but if by this is meant that for every effect to be explained an ad- 

 equate cause must be assigned, then most men are unequal to the 

 occasion. What should be thought of the man who believes that 

 the character of the weather for the next month is determined by 

 the position of the horns of the new moon, or of the supporters of 

 the pretensions of Dr. Gary and of Keely some of them are not 

 only college-bred but have reputations for business sagacity quite 

 out of proportion to their knowledge of possibilities. Now, the 

 study of mathematics as it is conducted to-day fails to develop a 

 very strong sense of the necessities of mathematical relations, for 

 the reason that most of it is symbolic and the symbols are not trans- 

 lated into experience. On the other hand, geometry is well calcu- 

 lated to induce in one an unshakable belief in such necessities ; but 

 this subject is neglected, while algebra and other symbolic pro- 

 cesses engross the time and attention to the detriment of the stu- 

 dent who goes no further than his prescribed studies. I know of 

 a college president who a few years ago denied the validity of 

 simple arithmetic processes when the numbers rose to millions ! 

 Now, most men have beaten into them in their business lives these 

 necessary relations about which I am speaking, so far as their 

 own business is concerned, and there is no trusting to superstitious 

 factors, for superstition is but a belief in an inadequate cause ; 

 outside of their business their judgments are untrustworthy. 

 But physics and chemistry, when pursued in the laboratory, pre- 

 sent in a tolerably simple form relationships in an invariable and 

 quantitative way, and the student learns by experience that, where 

 .certain conditions are, a certain result will follow with rigorous 

 exactitude. Familiarity with facts of this class leaves him with 

 the consciousness that among physical and chemical phenomena, 

 wherever they occur, there is always a quantitative as well as a 



