November 7, I'JUO.] 



SCIENCE. 



723 



them by processes which produce fiber and 

 elasticity, and their own methods must be 

 shot tliroi;gli with the impulses of the uni- 

 versity. 



It is this that makes ovir age and our 

 task so interesting: this complex interde- 

 pendence and interrelationship of all the 

 processes which prepai-e the mind for effec- 

 tual service: this necessity that the mer- 

 chant and the financier should have trav- 

 eled minds, the engineer a knowledge of 

 books and men, the lawyer a wide view of 

 affairs, the physician a familiar acciuaint- 

 ance with the abstract data of science, and 

 that the closeted scholar himself should 

 throw his windows open to the four quar- 

 ters of the world. Every considerable un- 

 dertaking has come to be based on knowl- 

 edge, on thoughtfulness, on the masterful 

 handling of men and facts. The univer- 

 sity must stand in the midst, where the 

 roads of thought and knowledge interlace 

 and cross, and, building upon some coign 

 of vantage, command them all. 



It has happened that throughout two 

 long generations— long because filled with 

 the industrial and social transformation of 

 the world— the thought of studious men has 

 been bent upon devising methods by which 

 special aptitudes could be developed, de- 

 tailed investigations carried forward, in- 

 quiry at once broadened and deepened to 

 meet the scientific needs of the age, knowl- 

 edge extended and made various and yet 

 exact by the minute and particular re- 

 searches of men who devoted all the ener- 

 gies of their minds to a single task. And 

 so we have gained much, though we have 

 also lost much that must be recovered. We 

 have gained immensely in knowledge, but 

 we have lost system. We have acquired 

 an admirable, sober passion for accuracy. 

 Our pulses have been quickened, moreover, 

 by discovery. The world of learning has 

 been transformed. No study has stood 

 still. Scholars have won their fame, not - 



by erudition, but by exploration, the con- 

 quest of new territory, the addition of in- 

 finite detail to the map of knowledge. And 

 so we have gained a splendid proficiency 

 in investigation. We know the right meth- 

 ods of advanced study. We have made 

 exhaustive record of the questions waiting 

 to be answered, the doubts waiting to be 

 resolved, in every domain of inquiry ; thou- 

 sands of problems once unsolved, appar- 

 ently insoluble, we have reduced to their 

 elements and settled, and their answers 

 have been added to the commonplaces of 

 knowledge. But, meanwhile, what of the 

 preliminary training of specialists, what 

 of the general foundations of Imowledge, 

 what of the general equipment of mind, 

 which all men must have who are to serve 

 this busy, this sophisticated generation? 



Probably no one is to blame for the 

 neglect of the general into which we have 

 been led by our eager pursuit of the par- 

 ticular. Every age has lain under the re- 

 proach of doing but one thing at a time, of 

 having some one signal object for the sake 

 of which other things were slighted or 

 ignored. But the plain fact is, that we 

 have so spread and diversified the scheme 

 of knowledge in our day that it has lost 

 coherence. We have dropped the threads 

 of system in our teaching. And system 

 begins at the beginning. We must find the 

 common term for college and university; 

 and those who have great colleges at the 

 heart of the universities they are trying to 

 develop are under a special compulsion to 

 find it. Learning is not divided. Its king- 

 dom and government are centered, unitary, 

 single. The processes of instruction which 

 fit a large body of young men to serve their 

 generation with powers released and fit for 

 great tasks ought also to serve as the initial 

 processes by which scholars and investiga- 

 tors are made. They ought to be but the 

 first parts of the method by which the crude 

 force of untrained men is reduced to the 



