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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XV. No, 370. 



science; for then we might hope for the 

 establishment of laboratories for purposes 

 of investigation alone. To this proposition 

 I shall recur later. 



We now come to the fourth of the agen- 

 cies by which chemistry has been devel- 

 oped, the educational, and this is the most 

 important of all. Scientific research has 

 become a definite function of the modern 

 university, wherein the creation of knowl- 

 edge is given equal rank with the distribu- 

 tion thereof. Education to-day differs 

 from the education of former times, in that 

 a lower place is given to mere authority ; it 

 goes more to the foundation of things, and 

 so secures a foothold from which it can 

 build much higher. Research, both for its 

 own sake and as an example to the student, 

 is now expected of the teacher; his pupils, 

 coming face to face with the limitations of 

 knowledge, are shown the problems which 

 demand solution, and are taught some- 

 thing, by practice and by precept, of the 

 manner in which they can be solved. The 

 student learns that science is a living 

 growth, and that every earnest, sincere, 

 well-trained scholar can do something to- 

 wards its development. If we examine the 

 chemical journals of the nineteenth cen- 

 tury, we shall find that by far the larger 

 part of the discoveries therein recorded 

 were made in the laboratories of universi- 

 ties or schools. Even in our own journal, 

 with all its contributions from technical 

 and official sources, over sixty per cent, of 

 the communications published are of this 

 class. The significance of this fact, how- 

 ever, must not be overestimated ; we should 

 remember the restrictions under which the 

 technical chemist labors, whereas to the 

 university professor publication is almost 

 as the breath of life. His professional 

 standing, his chances of promotion, are pro- 

 foundly affected by the amount and char- 

 acter of the work which he puts forth; 

 silence, to him, means the possible reproach 



of inactivity; he must publish or remain 

 obscure. Furthermore, we must not for- 

 get that the teacher owes a debt to tech- 

 nology which can never be repaid. The 

 commercial demand for applications of 

 science has enlarged the field of education, 

 by compelling the establishment of poly- 

 technic schools. These institutions, all of 

 them of recent date, give employment to 

 thousands of instructors; they supplement 

 the universities, they multiply the facili- 

 ties for scientific work, and from them, too, 

 there flows a steady stream of contributions 

 to knowledge, to which the chemist is add- 

 ing his full share. 



Apart from the freedom to publish, the 

 university teacher has one great advantage 

 over the technical man. He is not confined 

 to any limited field of operations, such as 

 the chemistry of soap, or iron, or coal-tar; 

 the whole domain of the science lies open 

 before him to explore where he mil. The 

 possible utility of the work need not occupy 

 his mind; he can attack any problem he 

 chooses, and from any point of view. And 

 yet, vdth all incentives to breadth, his re- 

 searches may still be tainted with narrow- 

 ness, for the inevitable tendency to special- 

 ize puts its restrictions upon him. It is 

 much easier to be a physical chemist, an 

 organic chemist, an agricultural chem- 

 ist or an analyst, than it is to be a chem- 

 ist; and chemists, in the larger sense, 

 are few. It was Berzelius, I think, who 

 said that he was the last man who 

 could ever know all chemistry, and the say- 

 ing was both wise and true. Sixty years 

 ago our science could be mastered in its en- 

 tirety by one industrious student; to-day 

 it is so vast that subdivision is necessary. 

 Still, special research is not incompatible 

 Avith breadth of view ; every chemist should 

 understand the nature of the great central 

 problems; he should stand high enough to 

 overlook the field, no matter how small a 

 comer of it he may prefer to cultivate per- 



