20 KANSAS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 
equaled only by their prejudice against them. It isa fact that the larger pro- 
portion of those who have become students of the natural sciences have had their 
inclination formed despite of rather than by means of the university. The uni- 
versity seldom intimates to them that science studies ought to form an impor- 
tant part of their general training. 
The result of all this desultory or biased study is that the student usually 
graduates without any clear idea of what he will do in life. He rarely studies 
with any definite aim, save that of getting an education, of the value of which 
he has little conception. He has been taught to believe that the best possible 
preparation for success in any department of life is a liberal education, and he 
does not trouble himself much as to what his future career may be, resting self- 
satisfied in the delusive assumption that he will be fitted to enter upon anything. 
It is true that the most earnest students that we have are those of the profes- 
sional schools. A distinguished teacher of engineering has said: ‘‘ It is unques- 
tionably a fact that the engineering students of our colleges do more and harder 
work for a degree of equal grade than do the students of other departments.” 
As a teacher of medical science, I know that the average medical student does 
fifty per cent. more work than those of like capacities in the undergraduate arts 
courses. There can be no denial of the fact that the most earnest students are 
those who seek knowledge as a direct means of success in life rather than for the 
mere pleasure of its possession. 
I believe, therefore, that the principle, now so largely adopted, which permits 
the student to browse about at his own will, with a nibble here and a bite there, is 
wrong. He should,be permitted and required, early in his life, to gaze upon the 
broad field of knowledge and at least to taste some of its enjoyments, in order that 
he may find out what his best and easiest path will be towards success. Away 
svith the medieval idea that a course in arts fits a man for anything. It does not 
and never will, unless it changes very much from what it yet is. As we have 
seen, the degree of bachelor of science in engineering, to which we may also add’ 
that in pharmacy, represents a larger degree of training and a greater knowledge 
than that possessed by the bachelor of arts. Why, then, does the latter assume 
such transcendent importance in education? Solely upon claim of culture. How 
many are the sins that are committed in thy name! The classical student, who 
has devoted five or six of the best years of his life to the study of the ancient 
languages, with little or no attention given to the modern sciences, is dwarfed 
and narrowed in his conceptions of life, even as the scientific student would be 
with no knowledge of the languages. Horace Greeley meant just such students 
as these when he said: ‘‘Of all horned cattle, deliver me from the college gradu- 
ate.’”? I by no means wish to deprecate the study of language and of philology. 
They are among the noblest that the student may undertake, and well worthy of 
the ardent pursuit of the specialist. So, too, are the professions of law and medi- 
cine; but no one will presume to say that everybody should be a lawyer ora 
physician in order to be cultured. 
At Yale College not less than nine or ten years of foreign-language study are 
required for graduation, and not one week of any natural science. In the Uni- 
versity of Kansas, which may be taken as an average type of the western uni- 
versities, five years’ study of foreign language must be had, and nothing 
whatever of any biological science. 
Is that department of human knowledge which, more than all others, has 
been the foundation of the civilization of the present century ; which has done 
more to lengthen life, to ameliorate its burdens, to improve, purify and advance 
the world; which has furnished one of the great underlying principles of modern 
