SCIENCE AND THE COLLEGES. 733 



One of the great changes which have come to American educa- 

 tion has been the extension of scientific methods to many subjects 

 formerly deemed essentially unscientific. For this change the in- 

 fluences which have come to us from Germany are largely respon- 

 sible. Thirty years ago the mental philosophy which formed the 

 staple of the work of the college president was thoroughly dog- 

 matic, like his moral science and his political economy. It was a 

 completed subject, having its base in speculation, and its growth 

 by logical deductions, and no thought of experimental proof or 

 of advancement by investigation was ever brought before the 

 student. 



Now psychology is in the best schools completely detached 

 from metaphysics, and is an experimental science as much as 

 physiology or embryology. By its side ethics and pedagogics are 

 ranging themselves — the scientific study of children, and the study 

 of the laws of right, by the same methods as those we use to test 

 the laws of chemical affinity. Metaphysics, too, has ranged itself 

 among the historical sciences, the study no longer of intuitive and 

 absolute truth, but the critical investigation of the outlook of 

 man on the universe, as shown through the history of the ages. 

 The old metaphysical idea is passing away, soon to take its place 

 with the science of the dark ages in which it rose. 



History, too, is no longer a chronicle of kings and battles. It 

 is the story of civilization, the science of human society and human 

 institutions. The Germans have taught us that all knowledge is 

 science, capable of being placed in orderly sequence, and of being 

 increased by the method of systematic investigation. 



The study of language now finds its culmination in the science 

 of philology, the science of the growth of speech. Every branch 

 of learning is now studied, or may be studied, inductively, and 

 studied in the light of the conception of endless and orderly 

 change, to which we give the name of evolution. This conception 

 has come to be recognized as one underlying all human knowledge. 

 Seasons return because conditions return, but the conditions in the 

 world of life never return. The present we know, but we can know 

 it thoroughly only in the light of the past. What has been must 

 determine what is, and the present is bound to the past by un- 

 changing law. All advance in knowledge implies a recognition of 

 this fact. The study of science must be grounded in the concep- 

 tion of orderly change, or change in accordance with the laws of 

 evolution. 



It is, after all, the presence of scholars that makes the univer- 

 sity. It is in such men that the University of Illinois has its ex- 

 istence. It is located neither in Champaign nor in Urbana ; it is 

 wherever its teachers may be, wherever its workers have gone. 

 We have met to-day to dedicate its Science Hall. To the future 



