196 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



being an essential requisite for the A. B. degree), and this linguistic 

 power is more easily acquired in early youth than afterward, when the 

 mind is engrossed with severer studies. 



This broadening of the requisites for admission is the last step in a 

 series of changes by which, at Harvard College, scientific culture has 

 been placed on the same footing as literary culture, and recognized as 

 an equally fitting preparation for the degrees in arts. Those who have 

 advocated these changes have seen clearly from the first that the study 

 of natural science could not compete with the study of literature as 

 a means of culture unless the discipline were equally severe, and un- 

 less legitimate scientific methods were strictly followed. To master 

 a scientific subject as a body of systematized truth, and present it ele- 

 gantly at a written examination, is a literary work, and the ability to 

 do this work well is a normal result of literary training. The nature 

 of the subject-matter does not essentially alter the character of the 

 mental effort, and the power of ready acquisition and clear expression 

 works very much in the same way, whether the material fashioned be 

 science, history, or literature. This literary power is a talent of the 

 very highest order, in many professions the one power needed, and 

 in all professions a power of great value. But it is not the scientific 

 power. It is not the power by which the physician investigates dis- 

 ease, by which the navigator crosses the ocean, or the geologist ex- 

 plores a continent ; it is not the power by which a large part of the 

 practical work of modern civilization is accomplished. The true test 

 of scientific power is the ability to interpret Nature, and this can only 

 be acquired by cultivating to the utmost — 1. The perceptive faculty, by 

 which observations are made ; 2, The delicate manipulation required in 

 exj)erimenting ; and, 3. The inductive method of reasoning by which 

 correct conclusions are drawn from the results of observation or ex- 

 periment. Moreover, long experience has shown that the old literary 

 methods of education, so far from tending to cultivate the scientific 

 faculties, rather tend to blunt them, and therefore that, without un- 

 usual native talent, the best results of scientific training can not be 

 attained unless we begin with pupils at an early age. It is easy to 

 awaken among college students a taste for natural science, and all the 

 easier on account of the barrenness of their previous studies ; but, so 

 long as the average college student is not taught to use his perceptive 

 faculties until that late stage of his education, it is obvious that the 

 Btandard of scientific culture in our higher institutions of learning can 

 not compare with that of the literary culture which has engrossed the 

 attention of the student from childhood. AVe can not reach a stand- 

 ard that will command general respect until we can secure real science 

 training in the preparatory schools. The acquisition of scientific knowl- 

 edge by the study of text-books, however excellent in themselves, will 

 not in the least degree promote this end, tinless possibly by awaken- 

 ing a desire to study Nature. AVhat we require is, that the eye should 



