March 31, 1922] 



SCIENCE 



331 



into the habit of calling upon the state to meet 

 all their wants. The genius of the Anglo- 

 Saxon race has in the past lain in the develop- 

 ment of individual initiative, and if we lose 

 that we shall lose our most priceless heritage. 

 Even in the field of education the greatest and 

 most distinctive contributions which our race 

 has made thus far have been made through pri- 

 vate institutions like Oxford, Harvard, and 

 Chicago — institutions which are supported by 

 men whom it has been our glory to develop iu 

 numbers found nowhere else in the world — 

 men who have treated their wealth and their 

 talents as public trusts and have volunta,rily 

 devoted them to public ends. I, for one, be- 

 lieve that some, at least, of our most important 

 future contributions are going to come because 

 we continue to develop such men and to pre- 

 serve such ideals. 



In the fourth place, I wish to accept this 

 gift on behalf of American education, to which 

 this institution hopes to contribute by its ex- 

 ample an important element. We have suc- 

 ceeded in this country marvelously well in 

 quantity or mass-education, as we have in quan- 

 tity production. We have not as j'et succeeded 

 as well as have a number of other countries in 

 quality education. We have not produced one- 

 half as many— I think I may say one-fifth as 

 many outstanding scientific and technical men 

 in proportion to our population as have Hol- 

 land, England, Germany, or Eranee. The 

 English honor system, to take but one example, 

 has selected and trained the exceptional man in 

 England and Canada as nothing in this country 

 has thus far done, and after all the progress 

 of civilization is determined by the very few 

 men of vision and capacity which each age 

 develops. There is then not only a place, but 

 there is tremendous need in the United States 

 for some schools which are designed to furnish 

 exceptional opportunities and to give exception- 

 al training to exceptional men. This has been 

 the aim of the trustees of this Institute from the 

 start. This is why the first step taken in the 

 initiation of the work of the Norman Bridge 

 Laboratory has been to provide something rare 

 in America but something which the Institute 

 already has, namely, an unexcelled staff in 



mathematical physics. Four-fifths of all teach- 

 ing is the teaching of example. Creative men 

 arise spontaneously in an atmosphere in which 

 creative men exist and in general nowhere else. 



But there is a second reason for accepting 

 this gift in behalf of American education. 

 With the gradual disappearance of the classics 

 and the rigid discipline which they furnished, 

 as the basis of our higher educational system, 

 there have been slowly creeping into it during 

 the past two decades certain emasculating influ- 

 ences which need to be counteracted. There is 

 no Elisha upon whom the mantle of the classics 

 can fall except the mathematical and physical 

 sciences. There is no training like that which 

 they furnish for teaching men to apply them- 

 selves intensively, to observe carefully and cor- 

 rectly, to treat their data lionestly and dis- 

 passionately, and to reason objectively from a 

 given set of conditions to their inevitable eon- 

 sequences — in a word to see clearly and to 

 think straight. Indeed, there is nothing else 

 left to constitute the backbone of the training 

 of the coming generation if it is to maintain 

 the virility and the strength of those that have 

 preceded. The Institute hopes to do some 

 pioneer work in demonstrating the values of an 

 education having the mathematical and physical 

 sciences for its backbone. I accept this gift, 

 then, in behalf of American education in the 

 confident belief that the intensive training in 

 the mathematical and physical sciences which 

 will take place within its walls may exert a 

 wholesome, yes, a saving infiuence upon Ameri- 

 can education as a whole. 



In the fifth place, if I may be so presump- 

 tuous, I wish to accept this gift in the name 

 of Southern California, of which I have been 

 a resident for the whole of three months, for I 

 believe that this enterprise here is not a local 

 enterprise. I believe that there is a contribu- 

 tion which it can and will make to the intel- 

 lectual and cultural development of this whole 

 empire of the south, which with all that it has 

 of stimulating climate, of enterprise, of wealth, 

 and of business capacity, still needs through- 

 out its length and breadth the stability and 

 sanity — in a word the culture — which a center 

 of rigorous, objective, scientific thinking should 



