286 SCIENCE IN EDUCATION 



difficulty in finding time for the absolutely essential 

 subjects required for their degrees. Well may they 

 declare that it is hopeless for them to attempt to 

 engage in anything more, and especially in anything 

 that will not tell directly on their places in the final 

 class-lists. With the best will in the world, and with 

 even, sometimes, a bent for literary pursuits, they 

 may believe themselves compelled to devote their 

 whole time and energies to the multifarious exactions 

 of their science curriculum. 



Such a result of our latest reformation in education 

 may be unavoidable, but it is surely matter for regret. 

 A training in science and scientific methods, admirable 

 as it is in so many ways, fails to supply those human- 

 ising influences which the older learning can so well 

 impart. For the moral stimulus that comes from an 

 association with all that is noblest and best in the 

 literatures of the past, for the culture and taste that 

 spring from prolonged contact with the highest models 

 of literary expression, for the widening of our sym- 

 pathies and the vivifying of our imagination by the 

 study of history and philosophy, the teaching of 

 science has no proper equivalents. 



Men who have completed their formal education 

 with little or no help from the older learning may be 

 pardoned should they be apt to despise such help and 

 to believe that they can very well dispense with it in 

 the race of life. My first earnest advice to the science 

 students of this College is, not to entertain this belief 

 and to refuse to act on it. Be assured that, in your 

 future career whatever it may be, you will find in 

 literature a source of solace and refreshment, of 



