NOVEMBEB 19, 1920] 



SCIENCE 



475 



pliskment has only stimulated the desire for 

 further advance. Every evidence that we 

 have indicates the wide open range for dis- 

 covery of new principles and new applications 

 of Icnowledge in practically every field which 

 the intellect explores. 



In an attempt to understand the need for 

 continuous research activity, an acquaintance 

 with the order of stability or instability in 

 nature and in human affairs is hardly less im- 

 portant than a conception of the relatively 

 narrow limits of attained knowledge. Human 

 beings seem curiously inconsistent in that 

 though they are stunted individually without 

 constant growth or change, they attempt to 

 deceive themselves into belief that an un- 

 changing situation is the normal condition of 

 nature. We calculate an average rainfall and 

 erpect it to rain just so many inches, be it 

 24 or 46 each year. We are shocked if it 

 rains less. We see the rocks distorted and 

 torn by countless movements dating through 

 all past periods of earth's history, but we are 

 surprised when a slip of a few inches disturbs 

 the seeming present-day stability and pro- 

 duces an earthquake. We build highways of 

 concrete and are astonished that they wear 

 out. We write constitutions and expect the 

 judgment of the men who made them to fit 

 all times and conditions. Yet history shows 

 us that with the law which states that noth- 

 ing is completely destroyed, we must write 

 with Pythagoras that nothing remains con- 

 tinuously the same. The geological book — 

 the greatest historical document of all the 

 ages— gives us as one of its truths the fact 

 that in the known hundred or more million 

 year record of life, nothing has remained in 

 constant form; that the rule has been not 

 only continuous change but also continuous 

 advance of the highest level. Through vast 

 periods man has himself been subject to 

 changes like those that have been expressed in 

 other living types ; and the habit of nature so 

 set forth seems to indicate that with the earth 

 in continuous state of modification we may 

 expect life and man to keep for the future a 

 rate of growth not less rapid than that of past 

 ages. Assured of the validity of these prin- 



ciples, we can be certain that as a race and as 

 individuals we shall be almost continuously 

 under the necessity of meeting adjustment 

 and readjustment to new conditions. We 

 have to face not merely the question of new 

 knowledge which research should secure for 

 the use of the moment, but with this we must 

 have understanding which will guide and 

 support us in the continuous movement in- 

 cidental and evolutional which must be looked 

 upon as the natural order. 



With realization of the unattained limits of 

 knowledge, and with the conception of con- 

 tinuously operating growth and readjustment 

 to which we as individuals and as groups are 

 subject, there comes to every person an imder- 

 standing of the necessity for continuously 

 operating constructive work. The giving of 

 such a view as has been suggested is in my 

 interpretation a necessary part of the broad 

 function of education. 



Education should not only give the wider 

 and deeper view of the structure of knowledge, 

 but with this it should furnish an acquaint- 

 ance with the methods by which knowledge is 

 obtained and applied. By one classification, 

 educational work may be g^iven five great pur- 

 poses: (1) To determine our individual 

 capacity for knowledge, and adaptability to 

 special subjects; (2) acquisition of facts; (3) 

 learning quality of judgment and organization 

 of materials; (4) developing power to con- 

 struct or create; (5) forming of character 

 and development of altruistic motives. Edu- 

 cation often concentrates itself on the acquisi- 

 tion of knowledge or of facts organized and 

 unorganized, neglecting in considerable meas- 

 ure questions of capacity, training of judg- 

 ment, constructive ability, and the develop- 

 ment of character, lifot without significance 

 is an illustration in a recent publication rep- 

 resenting a student with his arms piled full 

 of books marked "knowledge," but imable to 

 accept the volume of " wisdom " or judgment 

 offered to him. 



The third and fourth of the five points 

 mentioned in the classification of educational 

 aims, namely, judgment and creative ability, 

 are in a large measure representative of re- 



