OCTOBEB 16, 1908] 



SCIENCE 



503 



improve its material prosperity; educa- 

 tional facilities which will train men to 

 uphold its political, ethical and intellectual 

 ideals and to improve upon them by push- 

 ing forward the boundaries of knowledge 

 by the discovery of new truth. It must 

 train for its own leaders all who are capable 

 of serving as such in any line of human 

 activity or thought. This necessity in- 

 volves the frank recognition of the fact 

 that the doctrine of equality, which under- 

 lies democracy, can not be applied in the 

 same sense in all directions. It means 

 equality of status in civil and political 

 matters, but not equality in economic 

 condition, and, still less, in intellectual 

 matters. Democracy will find its safety 

 and growth only in a frank acceptance of 

 the intellectual inequality of men, the 

 selection of the superior as its leaders, and 

 the provision of men and means to train 

 these leaders as experts in its service in 

 every line of its wants, including those 

 whose special interest shall be the develop- 

 ment and preservation of the intellectual 

 and moral ideals and standards of the de- 

 mocracy. Unless it does this it will be- 

 come the prey of the demagogue and of 

 corrupt wealth. 



But what kind of scholarship should a 

 democracy support and in what ways can 

 scholarship be shown to meet those needs 

 of progress and leadership which I claim 

 are necessary to the stability and per- 

 manence of a democratic society? By 

 scholarship in this connection I mean not 

 only the wide and deep knowledge of a 

 particular subject, but the power to add 

 new truth to the world's stock of knowl- 

 edge which commonly goes under the name 

 of research. 



There is an idea not infrequently ex- 

 pressed that a publicly supported system 

 of education, whether grade schools or uni- 

 versities, ought to be more concerned with 

 those studies which are likely to contribute 



immediately or directly to earning a living 

 than with those which have no immediate 

 or direct connection with the acquisition 

 of the material good things of life. I have 

 already adverted to this thought, and I 

 shall try in a moment to show that it is 

 entirely without foundation, and that the 

 continued success of a democracy not only 

 permits but requires devotion to the pur- 

 suit of the most abstract sciences and the 

 loftiest flights of imagination as well as to 

 those more concrete subjects whose advance 

 ministers to the immediate prosperity of 

 an individual, a class or a community. 



In considering this subject De Tocque- 

 ville roughly grouped all subjects of scien- 

 tific pursuit into those which are theo- 

 retical, with no known application, those 

 which are theoretical but whose study is 

 carried on because the immediate applica- 

 tion of the theory is obvious, and finally, 

 the applied or so-called practical studies. 



Of the three divisions into which we may 

 group the lines of scholarly research the 

 utility to democracy of what may be called 

 practical scholarship and research is so 

 obvious that we need not discuss it at 

 length. This division of our subject com- 

 prises research in all those practical sub- 

 jects which minister directly to the eco- 

 nomic wants of the people. It comprises 

 the whole group of applied sciences, in- 

 eluding those engineering and agricultural 

 subjects which have taken so promi- 

 nent a place in our recent educational de- 

 velopment. It is commendable and neces- 

 sary to study how to make two blades of 

 grass grow where one grew before, how to 

 improve our soil so that the product of 

 the acre shall continue to feed the growing 

 multitude of the city and at the same time 

 increase the profit of the farmer; how to 

 harness the forces of nature to complicated 

 machinery so that sufficient food and cloth- 

 ing shall be put within the reach of aU. 

 These things, I say, are desirable and neces- 



