776 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVII. No. 960 



between science and education. This 

 change is equally marked in the profes- 

 sional training which prepares students for 

 their several callings, and in the general 

 training which prepares them for the duties 

 and enjoyments of citizenship. 



Fifty years ago the professional study 

 of science in our universities was confined 

 within very narrow limits — surprisingly 

 narrow to those who see those places as 

 they are to-day. There was no room for 

 science in the schools of theology or of law. 

 •Schools of philosophy, in the modern sense 

 of the word, had hardly developed. Even 

 in schools of medicine, where the study 

 ■of natural science in universities first 

 gained a foothold, there was relatively 

 little of scientific method, as we to-day 

 Tjnderstand the words, either in the teach- 

 ing or in the study. There was much more 

 learning of names of things than there now 

 is, and much less learning of reasons of 

 things ; much more of tradition and much 

 less of investigation. The anatomy and 

 chemistry of the medical schools of those 

 days were good sciences, as far as they 

 went, but they generally did not go very 

 far. As to the use made of science there 

 is truth in the remark of one of my former 

 colleagues that down to a recent day the 

 three learned professions of theology, law 

 and medicine had not advanced far beyond 

 the old conception of the magic of the 

 tribal medicine man, that the important 

 thing for science to do was to find proper 

 formulas of exorcism with which to banish 

 evil spirits from their several realms of ac- 

 tion. 



Outside of the universities, a half cen- 

 tury ago, things were little or no better. 

 There was a small number of schools of 

 engineering and a still smaller number of 

 schools of chemical technology; but they 

 did not form part of a large scheme of 

 business training for the nation as a whole. 



Most of the engineers had learned their 

 profession in the field; most of the tech- 

 nologists had learned it in the shop. 



All of this has changed during the fifty 

 years of the life of the academy, and 

 changed radically for the better. Our 

 universities have developed scientific study 

 in all their departments, and especially so 

 in their schools of medicine and philos- 

 ophy. Side by side with these university 

 schools or faculties there have grown up 

 colleges of engineering and technology, 

 sometimes in connection with the univer- 

 sity, sometimes outside of it, which lay a 

 scientific foundation for many a calling 

 that only a few years ago was thought to 

 need no scientific foundation at all. The 

 world has found a place for the scientific 

 expert in every line, and is inclined to re- 

 gard as the best school, not the one that has 

 the most students, not even the one that 

 can give the best general education, but 

 that which in the different lines can train 

 and furnish scientific experts of the high- 

 est rank and most varied knowledge. 



For civilized nations have at last come 

 to the conclusion that the old supposed an- 

 tagonism between theory and practise was 

 a misleading conception, and that the 

 habit of drawing a sharp line between the 

 theoretical man and the practical man was 

 a pernicious one. 



Fifty years ago a man who had obtained 

 all his knowledge of his business by his own 

 experience was habitually proud of the 

 fact; he was, as the phrase went in those 

 days, a self-made man who spent most of 

 his time in worshipping his creator. He 

 counted it a matter of superiority that he 

 knew nothing except what he had found 

 out himself and taught himself. To-day it 

 is recognized that every practical man can 

 learn much from the theorist; that there 

 is room for the application of scientific 

 principles in every department of life ; 



