14 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XII. No. 288. 



recollection of many liere present— when 

 science was an unknown quantity in our 

 common schools and a sort of imaginary 

 quantity in our colleges. The average 

 school boy's idea of science, as Huxley says 

 in one of his earlier essays, was that it 

 meant 'skill in boxing.' One professor- 

 ship in a college was commonly compre- 

 hensive enough to include all the sci- 

 ences, and frequently too comprehensive 

 for the peace of college faculties ; for, 

 strange as it now appears to us, some of 

 the growing sciences were looked upon as 

 threatening the stability of the social 

 fabric, and all were regarded as dangerously 

 aggressive. Laboratories were either wholly 

 wanting or little used ; and although most 

 students gained the idea that all that is 

 worth knowing was ascertained long ago 

 and is to be found in books, libraries seemed 

 to be maintained for the sole benefit of 

 librarians and bookbinders. These were 

 the good old times when the college pro- 

 fessor heard recitations by day and read 

 polite literature by night. 



It is matter of history that the educa- 

 tional progress of the past three decades 

 has not been accomplished without an in- 

 tellectual struggle, the noise of which is 

 still heard, occasionally, in the wail of 

 those who fear that the treasures as well as 

 the rubbish of the golden age of antiquity 

 may be engulfed by the iconoclasm of the 

 present age of steel. But whatever may 

 have been our prepossessions, as we look 

 back on this struggle, with our senses of 

 proportion and humor not overstrained by 

 the pressing nearness of events, there ap- 

 pears little cause for regret. The emanci- 

 pation of education from the dominance 

 of classical tradition is seen to be merely 

 an incident in the general advance. What- 

 soever is worthy and noble in the ancient 

 learning has acquired new and increasing 

 interest in the light of the growing science 

 of anthropology ; and whatsoever is un- 



worthy and ignoble may well wither in the 

 light of modern criticism. 



But surprising and gratifying as have 

 been the achievements of science in our 

 day, their most important indication to us 

 is that there is indefinite room for improve- 

 ment and advancement. While we have 

 witnessed the establishment of the two 

 widest generalizations of science, the doc- 

 trine of energy and the doctrine of evolu- 

 tion, we have also witnessed the accumula- 

 tion of an appalling aggregate of unrelated 

 facts. The proper interpretation of these 

 must lead to simplification and unification, 

 and thence on to additional generalizations. 

 An almost inevitable result of the rapid 

 developments of the past three decades 

 especially is that much that goes by the 

 name of science is quite unscientific. The 

 elementary teaching and the popular ex- 

 position of science have fallen, unluckily, 

 into the keeping largely of those who can- 

 not rise above the level of a purely literary 

 view of phenomena. Many of the bare 

 facts of science are so far stranger than 

 fiction that the general public has become 

 somewhat overcredulous, and untrained 

 minds fall an easy prey to the tricks of the 

 magazine romancer or to the schemes of 

 the perpetual motion promoter. Along 

 with the growth of real science there has 

 gone on also a growth of pseudo-science. 

 It is so much easier to accept sensational 

 than to interpret sound scientific literature, 

 so much easier to acquire the form than it 

 is to possess the substance of thought, that 

 the deluded enthusiast and the designing 

 charlatan are not infrequently mistaken by 

 the expectant public for true men of science. 

 There is, therefore, plenty of work before 

 us ; and while our principal business is the 

 direct advancement of science, an impor- 

 tant, though less agreeable duty, betimes, 

 is the elimination of error and the exposure 

 of fraud. 



As we contemplate the future activities 



