THE GROWTH OF SCIKNCE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 171) 



teaohor no less than as a hewer of wood and a drawer of water. And 

 the pursuit of science must be followed, not by the professional few 

 onl)^, but at least in such measure as .will insure the influence of 

 example hy the many. But this latter point I need not urge before 

 this great association, whose chief ol)ject during more than half a cen- 

 tury has been to bring within the fold of science all who would answer 

 to the call. In the second i)lace, it nuist ])e understood that the train- 

 ing to be looked for from science is the outcome, not of the accumula- 

 tion of scientific knowledge, but of the practice of scientific inquiry. 

 Man may have at his fingers' ends all the accomplished results and all 

 the current opinions of any one or of all the branches of science, and 

 yet remain wholly unscientific in mind; but no one can have carried 

 out even the humblest research without the spirit of science in some 

 measure resting upon him. And that spirit may in part be caught 

 even without entering upon an actual investigation in search of a new 

 truth. The learner ma}" be led to old truths, even the oldest, in more 

 ways than one. He may be brought abruptly to a truth in its finished 

 form, coming straight to it like a thief climbing over the wall; and the 

 hurry and press of modern life tempt many to adopt this quicker wav. 

 Or he may be more slowly guided along the path by which the truth 

 was reached by him who first laid hold of it. It is by this latter way 

 of learning the truth, and- by this alone, that the learner maj^ hope to 

 catch something at least of the spirit of the scientific inquirer. 



This is not the place, nor have I the wish, to plunge into the tur- 

 moil of controversy; but if there be any truth in what I have been urg- 

 ing, then they are wrong who think that in the schooling of the young 

 science can be used with profit only to train those for whom science 

 will be the means of earning their bread. It may be that from the 

 point of view of pedagogic art the experience of generations has fash- 

 ioned out of the older studies of literature an instrument of discipline 

 of unusual power, and that the teaching of science is as yet but a 

 rough tool in unpracticed hands. That, however, is not an adequate 

 reason why scope should not be given for science to show the value 

 which we claim for it as an intellectual training fitted for all sorts and 

 conditions of men. Nor need the studies of humanity and literature 

 fear her presence in the schools, for if her friends maintain that the 

 teaching is one-sided, and therefore misleading, which deals with the 

 doings of man onh", and is silent about the works of nature, in the 

 sight of which he and his doings shrink almost to nothing, she herself 

 would be the first to admit that that teaching is equally wrong which 

 deals only w ith the works of nature and says nothing about the doings 

 of man, who is, to us at least, nature's center. 



There is yet another general aspect of science on which I would 

 crave leave to say a w^ord. In that broad field of human life which we 

 call politics, in the struggle not of man with man, but of race with 

 race, science works for good. If we look onh^ on the surface it may 



