May 23, 1913] 



SCIENCE 



in 



that the farmer, the manufacturer or the 

 merchant, no less than the engineer or the 

 physician, must prepare to avail himself 

 of the theory which has been built up by 

 investigators, which has been taught in 

 laboratories and incorporated in books, if 

 he would bring his practise up to the needs 

 of the time. 



Of all the conquests of modern science, 

 there is none which, in my judgment, is 

 more remarkable or significant than this 

 conquest of current business opinion. "We 

 no longer draw a distinction between 

 learned and unlearned professions. We 

 have recognized that every profession and 

 every trade, in order to be pursued to the 

 best advantage, must be a learned one. 

 None so complex as to be unable to get 

 help from science ; none so simple as not 

 to need it. We have shaped our system of 

 technical training accordingly; and we 

 have learned to rate at their true worth 

 the men and the places that can give train- 

 ing as research institutions, side by side 

 with universities which make progress in 

 such training possible. 



Equally important, though of a differ- 

 ent and perhaps less satisfactory char- 

 acter, has been the change in the scheme 

 of our general education; in the choice of 

 subjects and methods of teaching offered 

 in preparation for the work of citizenship 

 as distinguished from the preparation of 

 each man for his business or calling. 



The old course of study in our high 

 schools and colleges consisted chiefly of 

 classics, mathematics and metaphysics, 

 with a little history and a few descriptive 

 courses in natural science. Of scientific 

 training in the modern sense it gave none, 

 except to the unusual man whose mathe- 

 matical tastes made the study of algebra 

 and analytical geometry a means of scien- 

 tific education in spite of text-book and 

 instnictor and class-room atmosphere, or 



the still more unusual man who used his 

 grammar and metaphysics as an exercise in 

 closely ordered reasoning. The course, as 

 a whole, was constructed for the student 

 whose interests were in the past rather 

 than in the present and the future. The 

 training which it gave — good, in many re- 

 spects — was a training in memory, in ex- 

 pression and in accuracy of apprehending 

 langtiage, one's own or another's, rather 

 than in scientific method, as we understand 

 it to-day. 



There is on the facade of the main hall 

 of a university which has done much for 

 education in many lines, a representation 

 of philosophy in a dominant central posi- 

 tion — old-fashioned metaphysical philos- 

 ophy — with the different sciences laying 

 tribute at her feet. I suspect that this is 

 not an unfair characterization of the views 

 as to the place of science in education 

 which prevailed among most college facul- 

 ties a generation or two ago. 



Now let me say right here that I do not 

 for a moment overlook the advantages of 

 the old system. It taught the boys to use 

 books and find things out from Ijooks, and 

 to expect to do hard work for that purpose 

 instead of to have somebody else make it 

 easy. This was a great merit, and the boys 

 trained under the old system showed this 

 merit. But college faculties were often 

 blind to the particular kind of book learn- 

 ing that was most significant for human 

 progress and which was of most concern to 

 the living world outside. 



For at the time when the academy was 

 founded, and in the time since, chemistry 

 and physics and geology and biology were 

 becoming not only matters of importance 

 to the experts in their several callings, as 

 I have indicated, but subjects of real and 

 dominant interest to intelligent men who 

 were not experts, but who cared for knowl- 

 edge and who cared for current history. 



