556 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLVII. No. 1223 



rected to a particular group of phenomena 

 peculiar to the science of his choice. This 

 group lies in the field of his direct vision, 

 so to speak, but surrounding this lies the 

 field of indirect vision, the field of univer- 

 sal knowledge, where objects are less dis- 

 tinctly seen. Between these two fields there 

 is, as already stated, no logical boundary. 

 To be sure our ideas of universal knowledge 

 must be imperfect and vague for any 

 achievement of universality can be but par- 

 tial. Yet although we may not possess the 

 mind "which is a mirror or glass, capable 

 of the image of the universal world, and 

 joyful to receive the impressions thereof as 

 the eye joyeth to receive light, ' '^* yet some 

 effort so to do must be made as our response 

 to this ideal of universality. 



Besides this finiteness of man which lim- 

 its our universality there is another limita- 

 tion which when it exists is fortunately 

 more amenable to amelioration. It is a cer- 

 tain reluctance to reflect broadly. We live 

 in an age of enforced and minute speciali- 

 zation. Each one of us is anxious to shine 

 in his chosen sphere but also correspond- 

 ingly reluctant to appear as a dilettante in 

 any other field. We feel, however much we 

 may regret it, that we have no time for mere 

 culture. Ultimately we may even become 

 like coal miners devoting their lives to 

 sending their laden trucks up to the sur- 

 face of a world they know not of. 



This is of course contrary to what I con- 

 ceive to be the university ideal, and fur- 

 thermore it is pedagogically undesirable. 

 For I do not think that it can be denied 

 that students would suffer from contact 

 with men who are wilfully limited in hori- 

 zon. I say "wilfully" because, to the stu- 

 dent, contact with aspiration may be as in- 

 spiring as contact with achievement. In 



i*Fraiicjs Baeon, "Advancement of Learning," 

 Bk. 1, pgf. 6. 



an atmosphere of limitation the student be- 

 comes a specialist also, not in one field but 

 in several. He may study Latin and sociol- 

 ogy and music and physiology and become 

 at least for a time a miniature specialist in 

 each, for between these subjects there are 

 to the student's mind no obvious connec- 

 tion. They form no part of a universal 

 scheme of things. Called on to construct 

 such a scheme he would be as helpless as the 

 ancient geographers who 



in Afrio maps 



With savage pictures filled their gaps, 



And o'er unhabitable downs 



Place elephants for want of towns.is 



At length he is permitted to depart from 

 our institutions of learning, taking with 

 him his compartmental knowledge, the more 

 compartmental the more closely he has de- 

 voted himself to his studies, whether pre- 

 scribed or chosen. 



How fond we all are of the quotation 

 that Sophocles "saw life steadily and saw 

 it whole. "^' Our veneration of Sophocles 

 rests upon the fact that from necessarily 

 limited data he made a great synthesis, a 

 great induction, and the example of 

 Sophocles commends itself to us as appro- 

 priate to set before aspiring young men. 

 But it may be (and that chiefly through 

 our own fault) that few of our students 

 have ever learned that any synthesis, how- 

 ever crude, is possible, much less that it is 

 expected of them. Should not the student 

 take with him from his alma mater the 

 vision of such a synthesis not as a finite 

 act to be performed but as a process con- 

 tinuing all through his intellectual life and 

 evolving as it goes his picture of truth as 

 he sees it 1 



Percy M. Davtson 

 Univbrsity or "Wisconsin 



16 Matthew Arnold, ' ' Sonnet to a Friend. ' ' 

 15 Jonathan Swift, ' ' On Poetry, a Eapsody, ' ' 

 pgf. 10, 1733. 



