LIFE OF PROFESSOR CHESTER DEWEY. 237 



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pleted, makes specialization in study a necessity. But it may be carried 

 too far, both in the neglect of general culture in the scientific investiga- 

 tor himself, and in the failure to attend to branches of science cognate to 

 that specially chosen for cultivation. We believe that in the end noth- 

 ing is gained to science by the neglect of those elements of scholarship 

 which belong, by common consent, to liberal education, in order to con- 

 centrate the activity of an entire life, from boyhood to age, upon a par- 

 ticular branch of science. Against such a course the whole example and 

 precept of our scientific fathers was directed. There is, in our own time, 

 a tendency to confound the spheres of professional and general education, 

 and to sacrifice liberal culture to special attainment. This seems tome 

 an evil which should be resisted. A distinguished chemist remarked, 

 not long since, that it was a cause for constant regret that his students 

 in analytical chemistry came to him so often without liberal culture and 

 discipline in letters, and general scientific knowledge and method. 



We may also question whether the disposition to specialize, among 

 investigators and professional scientific men, may not be carried to ex- 

 cess. IMay not what is gained to science in the more rapid accumulation 

 of facts, through exclusive devotion to some narrow range of inquiry, be 

 more than lost through the resulting deficiency in breadth of view"^ A 

 man who carries specialization to extremes, will become intellectually 

 purblind, and fail utterly in an adequate comprehension of the material 

 and moral cosmos, considered each as parts of one vast whole, finding 

 its unity in the mind of God. Said a great naturalist, the other day: 

 " I am more and more convinced of the solidaritj' of the sciences. I am 

 more and more inclined to distrust the observations of a man who is 

 familiar with but one narrow branch of inquiry." Does not knowledge, 

 by such specialization, grow faster than wisdom, breadth, and ijower? 

 The effect of extreme di^;ision of labor, in manufactures and trade, in 

 diminishing general capacity, intellectual and i3hysical, has be(m often 

 noted by economists. The guardians of public education, as well as of 

 scientific progress, may well be warned of an analogous danger. "The 

 more deeply the sciences are investigated," says a great historian, "the 

 more clearly is it seen that they are all connected. They resemble a 

 vast forest, every tree of which appears, at first sight, to be isolated and 

 separate, but, on digging be'neath the surface, their roots are all found 

 interlaced with each other." Whatever advantage comes from a broad 

 survey of the field of scientific inquiry, accrued to our scientifi(; pioneers 

 from the very necessities of their position. The broad, catholic sympa- 

 thy of these men with all branches of science, stands in sharp contrast 

 to that narrow scientific sectarianism which has too often disgraced 

 scientific associations on both sides of the Atlant«c. 



At a time when scientific men of certain sympathies and opinions 

 speak of religious men as obstacles to scientific progress, it is well to 

 bear in mind the fact that the lathers of American science were, almost 

 to a man, earnest believers in the divine authority of Christianity. The 



