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SCIENCE 



[Vol. LVI, No. 1439 



and the world; that it concerns them to know 

 this, and that it should be so presented that it 

 will, by encouraging them to busy their minds 

 with our stock notions and habits, best prepare 

 them to lead more intelligent lives and deal 

 more wisely than their predecessors with old 

 and new problems. Would it not be a most 

 important contribution to reorder and restate 

 this knowledge and suggest its implications? 

 Might not this be profitably done with entire 

 disregard of the timidities of educators and the 

 apprehensions of those who now support edu- 

 cation? No doubt things would have to be 

 said which have hitherto been regarded as dan- 

 gerous or inappropriate for the young to 

 know. Issues of a distinctly controversial na- 

 ture would constantly be arising. So such a 

 task should not be left to any single individual. 

 College faculties and teachers' associations are 

 in no position to run counter to respectable tra- 

 dition, and few there be that have any dis- 

 position to do so. As I have thought over the 

 matter I see no large and influential assoeia> 

 tion so well fitted as yourselves through a 

 peculiarly competent and broad-minded com- 

 mittee, to undertake the task of humanizing 

 science, and setting a new standard of educa- 

 tion. That it will be easy even with your re- 

 sources to choose the very best persons for such 

 a committee, or that its work will have any 

 immediate effect on general education is prob- 

 ably too much to expect. There are, however, 

 minds of the requisite temper, ti-aining and 

 literary tact. They must be hunted out and 

 brought together in an effective conspiracy to 

 promote the diffusion of the best knowledge we 

 have of man and his world. They should have 

 been researchers at some period of their lives, 

 and should continue to be researchers in an- 

 other sense. Their efforts would not longer 

 be confined to increasing knowledge in detail 

 but in seeking to discover a new synthesis of 

 what is already known or in the way to get 

 known. They should be reassorters, selecters, 

 combiners and illuminators. They should have 

 a passion for diffusing, by divesting knowledge 

 so far as possible of its abstract and profes- 

 sional character. At present there is a woeful 

 ignorance even among persons who pass for 

 intelligent, earnest and well read, in regard to 



highly important matters that are perfectly 

 susceptible of clear general statement. The 

 members of the proposed committee should 

 combine a knowledge of the exigencies of scien- 

 tific research with a philosophic outlook, human 

 sympathy, and a species of missionary ardor. 

 Each of them should have professional famil- 

 iarity with some special field of knowledge, but 

 this should have come to seem to him but a 

 subordinate feature of the magnificent scien- 

 tific landscape. 



Such a committee should be freed from edu- 

 cational restraints and from all suspicion of 

 having to consider the feelings and preferences 

 of donors and financial supporters. The more 

 open-minded teachers and managers of educa- 

 tion, as well as text-book writers and their pub- 

 lishers, would welcome a tribunal of high stand- 

 ing and unimpeachable independence, whose 

 opinion and decisions might be sought from 

 time to time to offset the complaints of impor- 

 tunate critics, who are now a constant nuisance 

 and occasionally a great danger. There is at 

 present a growing discontent with our educa- 

 tion which appears even among the hitherto 

 docile student bodies. The trouble lies not so 

 much in our sometimes inept and now and then 

 tyrannical form of administration; nor is it to 

 be met by devising new ways of teaching old 

 things. We must look to the very core of the 

 instruction given; to what is being taught and 

 to what is not. There is a recognized failure 

 to make connections between the work in school 

 and college on the one hand and the obligations 

 and amenities of later life on the other. The 

 whole substance and content of our general 

 education needs a thorough overhauling. Some- 

 thing should be found to replace the effete and 

 disintegrating old arts course. A good and 

 sound idea underlies it, but its aims and meth- 

 ods and assumed results will not stand inspec- 

 tion in the light of modern knowledge and mod- 

 ern conditions of life. The elective system was 

 but a confession that the tree of knowledge had 

 put forth so many and such thick branches that 

 the trunk was no longer visible. The stately 

 proportions of knowledge are now lost in its 

 ramifications. This difficulty can only be met 

 by a novel synthesis — groping and tentative 

 at first, but which will at least recognize and 



