774 ^^^ POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tion. It has been my duty for more than thirty years to present the ele- 

 ments of chemistry to the youngest class in one of our colleges, and I 

 have never had any reason to complain of their want of interest in the 

 subject. Indeed, I regard it as a great privilege to be the first to point 

 out to enthusiastic young men the wonderful vistas which modern sci- 

 ence has opened to our view. So far as their temporary interest is 

 concerned, I should greatly prefer that they had never studied the sub- 

 ject before coming to college. But even enthusiastic interest in popu- 

 lar lectures is not scientific culture. A few men in every class always 

 have been, and will continue to be, so far interested as to make the 

 cultivation of science the business of their lives. But such men always 

 labor under the disadvantages resulting from a want of early training, 

 and these obstacles repel a large number whose natural tastes and 

 abilities would otherwise have fitted them for a scientific calling. The 

 change from one system of culture to another, at the age of eighteen, has 

 all the disadvantages of changing a profession late in life. Neverthe- 

 less, the college will always continue to educate a number of men of 

 science in this way. Most of these men become teachers, and no one 

 questions that their previous linguistic training makes them all the 

 more forcible expositors of scientific truth. It is not for such persons 

 that I desire any change. I am, however, most anxious that the uni- 

 versity should do its part in educating that important class of men 

 who are to direct the industries and develop the material resources of 

 our country. Such men can be led to appreciate, and will give time 

 to acquire, an elegant use of language, but they will not devote four 

 or five years of their lives to purely linguistic training, and, if we do 

 not open our doors to them, they will be forced to content themselves 

 with such education as high-schools, or, at best, technical schools can 

 offer. But, while they will thus lose the broader knowledge and 

 larger scope which a university education affords, the university will 

 also lose their sympathy and powerful support. Such students are 

 now wholly repelled from the university, and, under a more liberal 

 policy, they would form an important and clear addition to our num- 

 bers, and — as I have said in another place — without diminishing by a 

 single man the number of those who come to college through the clas- 

 sical schools. 



But there is another class of young men with whom a system of 

 education based on the study of Nature would, as I am convinced, be 

 more successful than the prevailing system of linguistic culture: I refer 

 to those who now come to college, some of them through the influence 

 of family tradition, some of them through the expectation of social ad- 

 vantasre, and a still larger number on account of the attractions of col- 

 lege-lif e. Many of these are men who, with poor verbal memories, or 

 want of aptitude for recognizing abstract relations, can never become 

 classical scholars with any exertion that they can be expected to make, 

 but who can often be educated with success through their perceptive 



