August 27, 1909] 



SCIENCE 



259 



best test of his efficiency, is to make his 

 boys get scholarships. The preparation for 

 the scholarship too often means that about 

 two j'ears before the examination the boy 

 begins to specialize, and from the age of 

 sixteen does little else than the subject, be 

 it mathematics, classics, or natural science, 

 for which he wishes to get a scholarship; 

 then, on entering the university, he spends 

 three or four years stud;^nng the same sub- 

 ject before he takes his degree, when his 

 real life work ought to begin. How has 

 this training fitted him for this work? I 

 will take the case in which the system 

 might perhaps be expected to show to 

 greatest advantage, when his work is to be 

 original research in the subject he has been 

 studying. He has certainly acquired a 

 very minute acquaintance with his subject 

 — indeed, the knowledge possessed by some 

 of the students trained under this system 

 is quite remarkable, much greater than 

 that of any other students I have ever met. 

 But though he has acquired knowledge, the 

 effect of studying one subject, and one sub- 

 ject only, for so long a time is too often to 

 dull his enthusiasm for it, and he begins 

 research with much of his early interest 

 and keenness evaporated. Now there is 

 hardly any quality more essential to suc- 

 cess in research than enthusiasm. Research 

 is difficult, laborious, often disheartening. 

 The carefully designed apparatus refuses 

 to work, it develops defects which may 

 take months of patient work to rectify, 

 the results obtained may appear incon- 

 sistent with each other and with every 

 known law of nature, sleepless nights and 

 laborious days may seem only to make the 

 confusion more confounded, and there is 

 nothing for the student to do but to take 

 for his motto "It's dogged as does it," 

 and plod on, comforting himself with the 

 assurance that when success does come, the 

 difficulties he has overcome will increase 



the pleasure— one of the most exquisite 

 men can enjoy— of getting some conception 

 which will make all that was tangled, con- 

 fused and contradictory clear and con- 

 sistent. Unless he has enthusiasm to carry 

 him on when the prospect seems almost 

 hopeless and the labor and strain incessant, 

 the student may give up his task and take 

 to easier, though less important, pui'suits. 



I am convinced that no greater evil can 

 be done to a young man than to dull his 

 enthusiasm. In a very considerable ex- 

 perience of students of physics beginning 

 research, I have met with more— many 

 more- failures from lack of enthusiasm 

 and determination than from any lack of 

 knowledge or of what is usually known as 

 cleverness. 



This continual harping from an early 

 age on one subject, which is so efficient in 

 quenching enthusiasm, is much encouraged 

 by the practise of the colleges to give schol- 

 arships for proficiency in one subject alone. 

 I went through a list of the scholarships 

 awarded in the University of Cambridge 

 last winter, and, though there were 202 of 

 them, I could only find three cases in which 

 it was specified that the award was made 

 for proficiency in more than one subject. 



The premature specialization fostered by 

 the preparation for these seholai'ships in- 

 jures the student by depriving him of ade- 

 quate literary culture, while when it ex- 

 tends, as it often does, to specialization in 

 one or two branches of science, it retards 

 the progress of science by tending to isolate 

 one science from another. The boundaries 

 between the sciences are arbitraiy, and 

 tend to disappear as science progresses. 

 The principles of one science often find 

 most striking and suggestive illustrations 

 in the phenomena of another. Thus, for 

 example, the physicist finds in astronomy 

 that effects he has observed in the labora- 

 tory are illustrated on the grand scale in 



