o:)' 



NATURE 



[January 12, 191 1 



that if flat stones are free to fall, the longest axis 

 will approach horizontally, and that is the end of the 

 matter. 



Mr. Showerman's suggested comparison of the "pre- 

 fixes in P to be found in Plautus," "the terminations in 

 T of Terence," and " the sundry suffixes in S," is scarcely 

 an exaggeration of the kind of work assigned to many of 

 our research students. Such work is in itself absolutely 

 elementary. It teaches patience and perhaps exactness, 

 although, where the student finds that error is just as 

 good as truth in the final round-up, he is likely to lose 

 some of " the fanaticism for veracity " which is the 

 central element in the zealous comradery of the extension 

 of human knowledge. So long as the " new work " on 

 which our doctors of philosophy address themselves is 

 found in material rejected by scholars because a study of 

 it cannot possibly lead anywhere, so long will these 

 doctors be neither teachers nor enthusiasts. They will 

 justify the clever sneer as to the turning worm and the 

 graduate student. Elementary facts about raw material 

 is not the advancement of knowledge. They are killing 

 to those who have a capacity for something better. The 

 listing of " Terence's terminations in T " is a type of 

 work which, at the best, bears the same relation to re- 

 search that forge-work bears to engineering. It is worth 

 while to the engineer to know what it is like and to be 

 able to handle a hammer if need be. Moreover, a 

 hammered-out horse-shoe is an actual reality. But to 

 make a horse-shoe, even one of a form never seen before, 

 is not the final thesis for which the engineer enters the 

 university. 



Much of the graduate work in non-mathematical sub- 

 jects receives an appearance of accuracy from the use of 

 statistics or other forms of mathematics. This seems to 

 make the results " scientific." Mathematics is a science 

 only when its subject-matter is science — when it deals with 

 results of human experience. At other times it is simply 

 a method — a form of logic. A mathematical enumeration, 

 or even a formula, does not give exactness where it did 

 not exist before. 



The statistical enumeration of the " prefixes in P " or 

 the pebbles in the bank is held to give the method of 

 research. It teaches patience and accuracy, two funda- 

 mental virtues in the progress of science. Patience, per- 

 haps, if the student persists to the bitter end. Accuracy, 

 certainly not. Soon&r or later the student will discover 

 that to multiply by ten one of his columns of figures, or 

 to divide another by five, will have no effect on his final 

 conclusion, for there is not going to be any conclusion. 

 He will then learn to supplement his tables by the quicker 

 and more satisfactory method of guesswork. He turns 

 from the methods of pedantry to the method of journalism. 

 At the best, he will find that the less laborious methods 

 known as qualitative have the advantage over quantitative 

 methods, where matters of quantity have no real signifi- 

 cance. 



No one should begrudge any amount of time or strength 

 or patience spent on a real problem. In that regard, 

 Darwin's attitude towards the greatest of biological 

 problems is a model for all time. But we should believe 

 that there is a problem, and that our facts point towards 

 the truth in regard to it. A fact alone is not a truth, and 

 ten thousand facts may be of no more importance. A 

 horse-shoe is not an achievement. Still less are ten 

 thousand horse-shoes. " Facts are stupid things," Agassiz 

 used to say, " unless brought into connection by some 

 general law." In other words, facts signify nothing, 

 except as the raw material of truth. 



A graduate student of an honoured philologist in a 

 great university lately explained her graduate work to me. 

 A chapter in Luther's Bible was assigned to her, another 

 to each of her fellows. This was copied in longhand, and 

 after it all the variant German versions of the same 

 chapter. Her work was to indicate all the differences 

 involved. There may have been something behind it all. 

 The professor may have had in mind a great law of 

 variance, a Laut-verschiebung or Entwickelung of pious 

 phraseology. But no glimpse of this law ever came to 

 the student. More likely, the professor was at his wits 

 end to find some task in German which had never been 

 accomplished before, and which had never before occurred 



to any German taskmaster. No wonder the doctoi 

 degree is no guarantee of skill as a teacher! Among ti 

 first essentials of a teacher are clearness of vision ai 

 enthusiasm for the. work. This is not cultivated by thi 

 methods. It is not even "made in Germany." 'J 1 

 " law of time relations of iron and sulphuric acid " ni: 

 be developed in a year's work by dropping a thousai 

 weighed shingle nails into a thousand test tubes i>t 

 sulphuric acid, each having the amount requisite to turn 

 the whole into an iron sulphate. The length of the period 

 before each shingle nail disappears and that before tlv: 

 resultant liquid becomes clear can be measured. It may 

 even be proved that the cleaner the nail the more quickly 

 it dissolves. But all this is not chemical research. It 

 gives no wider grasp on the marvellous processes of 

 chemical reaction, and no greater enthusiasm for chemical 

 work or grasp on chemical teaching. 



If the counting in Plautus of the prefixes in P is a 

 tyj>e of the only sort of research that the classical know- 

 ledges permit, then let them go without research. Lit 

 them fall back on the charms of Latin verse, the surprisi s 

 of Latin wit, the matchless power of description of which 

 the Greek language is capable, and the monumental 

 splendour of the oldest of the story-tellers, who brought 

 even the gods into his service. Let literature be litera- 

 ture, and science science, and enthusiasm will precedi> 

 and follow any real advance in knowledge. Let th ■ 

 student be free to learn, and not to grind. Let him gn 

 with the masters of his own free will, not as he is hir' >' 

 by the pedants. As a final result we shall have again 

 schools of thought and action in America, and the 

 doctor's degree will not be a hindrance in the profession 

 of university teaching. 



When our graduate work is really advanced work, under 

 men who know the universe in the large as well as in the 

 small, its great movements as well as its forgotten dust 

 heaps, we shall have our American schools of science, and 

 the Darwins will again " walk with Henslow " over fields 

 as green as were ever those of Cambridgeshire. 



With the failure of the enthusiasm of the teacher we 

 have a lowering of ideals on the part of students. They 

 come too often to look on science as a career rather than 

 as an opportunity, to do that which in all the world 

 they would rather do, that which they would die rather 

 than leave undone. Too often, in the words of John 

 Cassin, " they look upon science as a milk cow rather 

 than as a transcendent goddess." 



The advent of the elective system, thirty years ago, bore 

 a wonderful fruitage. Men, soul-weary of drill, turned to 

 inspiration. Teachers who loved their work were met by 

 students who loved it. The students of science thirty 

 years ago came to it by escape from Latin and calculus 

 with the eagerness of colts brought from the barn to a 

 spring pasture. . In regions of eternal spring these colts 

 do not show this vernal eagerness. Now that science is 

 as much a matter of course as anything else, there is not 

 this feeling of release ; and the feeling that one to whom 

 the secrets of the woods and hills, the story of the sea 

 and the rocks, have been made known, belongs to a 

 chosen class, disappears when these matters are made open 

 to everyone. Scientific knowledge, as the result of con- 

 tinued endeavour and of persistent longing, is more appre- 

 ciated than when it comes as an open elective to all who 

 have completed English 3 and Mathematics 5. 



In one of the poems of James Whitcomb Riley this 

 sentence is expressed :— 



" Let's go a visiting back to Grisby's Station, 

 Back where we used to live, so happy and so poor." 



" So happy and so poor " the American college once 

 was that the student, the teacher, and nature were all 

 together, a'l hand in hand. It was this which made at 

 Munich the " Little Academy," concerning which Agassiz 

 once spyoke so eloquently. It was the contrast with great- 

 ness in the most simple surroundings that gave the school 

 at Penikese its unique position. As to this school, I once 

 used these words : — ■ 



" With all appreciation of the rich streams which in 

 late years have come to us from many sources, and 

 especially from the deep insight and resolute truthfulness 

 of Germany, it is still true that ' the school of all schools 



NO. 2150, VOL. 85] 



