412 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXIX. No. 741 



The new scientific and social situation de- 

 mands, and in increasing degree will make 

 it possible, that the educated man shall 

 control his world. And in so doing he will 

 save himself. "When this conception is 

 embodied in the college there will be no 

 lack of seriousness. 



When the colleges have made their 

 work once more a genuine and serious 

 preparation for the new social situation 

 they will be able to give society in turn the 

 aid it needs in changing from the old 

 fixed conceptions, and finding a new type 

 of social order— an order that shall make 

 larger provision for progress. This help, 

 I believe, is to come through the influence 

 of the newer experimental method which 

 largely under the influence of our gradu- 

 ate study is coming to leaven the best work 

 in all subjects. It has its fitness for our 

 new conditions as conspicuously as the 

 older method fitted the conditions of a 

 relatively fixed status. 



The laboratory method of studying the 

 sciences began to gain ground in the col- 

 leges at about the same time as the intro- 

 duction of the elective system. It has 

 been strongly reenforced by historical or 

 genetic conceptions given prominence by 

 the doctrine of evolution. Although still 

 very imperfectly carried out, it is replacing 

 more and more the scheme of fixed con- 

 ceptions and deduction from established 

 rules which constituted the older syntac- 

 tical, mathematical and moral systems. If 

 this can be carried over into professional 

 conceptions and social organization there 

 will be once more a close connection be- 

 tween the college and society. Medicine 

 and philanthropy have already made 

 notable progress. Theology and religion 

 are feeling the need of reconstruction. 

 The courts are perhaps necessarily the 

 most conservative elements— unless pos- 

 sibly we except schools and colleges— but 

 when legal education has felt fully the 



force of genetic study we may expect that 

 both criminal and civil justice will con- 

 sider in greater degree actual human and 

 social conditions in controlling human re- 

 lations. 



And if the established professions need 

 a new method to enable them to fulfill 

 their vocation in the society that is to be, 

 business and industry need the aid of 

 scientific method and standards to make 

 them professional in the true sense. Con- 

 sidering these occupations as non-profes- 

 sional, we have left them no test for the 

 success that every normal man wishes to 

 secure, but that of economic gain. And 

 since economic gain may result either from 

 service or from exploitation, our educa- 

 tional theory and training have lent no such 

 powerful support to the conception of 

 public service through one's vocation as 

 the scientific standards of law, medicine 

 and teaching afford members of those pro- 

 fessions. As President Eliot has pointed 

 out, this purely financial standard has not 

 proved a conspicuous success even from 

 the standpoint of efficient management of 

 business enterprise. Is it not desirable 

 that education should try to introduce 

 other and more scientific standards ? And 

 is it too high-flying an optimism to hope 

 that the time may come when it will 

 be considered as unprofessional to man- 

 age a country's industries or transporta- 

 tion or banking with an eye principally 

 to financial gain as it now is to practise 

 medicine with siich a standard of success? 

 The scientific and the ethical here go hand 

 in hand. 



The professional schools themselves are 

 not likely to embody this method in its full 

 significance in their work. The function 

 of the college intellectually is to make this 

 the dominant temper of the student. 



And the second intellectual function of 

 the college is to give material for the fu- 

 ture citizen. First of all, he must know 



