NOVEiMBKE 7, 1902.] 



SCIENCE. 



727 



crowding thought, an age when the mind 

 moved as it wer.e without prepossessions 

 and with an unsophisticated, child-like 

 curiosity, a season apart during which those 

 seats upon the Mediterranean seem the first 

 seats of thoughtful men. We shall not 

 anywhere else get a substitute for it. The 

 modern mind has been built upon that cul- 

 ture and there is no authentic equivalent. 



Drill in the mathematics stands in the 

 same category with familiar knowledge of 

 the thought and speech of classical an- 

 tiquity, because in them also we get the 

 life-long accepted discipline of the race, the 

 processes of pure reasoning which lie at 

 once at the basis of science and at the basis 

 of philosophy, grounded upon observation 

 and physical fact, and yet abstract, and of 

 the very stuff of the essential processes of 

 the mind, a bridge between reason and 

 nature. Here, too, as in the classics, is a 

 definitive body of knowledge and of reason, 

 a discipline which has been made test of 

 through long generations, a method of 

 thought which has in all ages steadied, per- 

 fected, enlarged, strengthened and given 

 precision to the powers of the mind. Math- 

 ematical drill is an introduction of the 

 boy's mind to the most definitely settled 

 rational experiences of the world. 



I shall attempt no proof that English 

 also is of the fundamental group of studies. 

 You will not require me to argue that no 

 man has been made free of the world of 

 thought who does not Imow the literature, 

 the idiomatic flavor and the masterful use 

 of his own tongue. 



But, if we cannot doubt that these great 

 studies are fundamental, neither can we 

 doubt that the circle of fundamental stud- 

 ies has widened in our day and that educa- 

 tion, even general education, has been ex- 

 tended to new boundaries. And that 

 chiefly because science has had its creden- 

 tials accepted as of the true patriciate of 

 learning. It is as necessary that the lad 



should be inducted into the thinking of the 

 modei-n time as it is that he should be care- 

 fully grounded in the old, accepted thought 

 which has stood test from age to age; and 

 the thought of the modern time is based 

 ujion science. It is only a question of 

 choice in a vast field. Special develop- 

 ments of science, the parts which lie in 

 controversy, the parts which are as yet but 

 half built up by experiment and hypothesis, 

 do not constitute the proper subject matter 

 of general education. For that you need, 

 in the field of science as in every other 

 field, the bodies of knowledge which are 

 most definitively determined and which are 

 most fundamental. Undoubtedly the fun- 

 damental sciences are physics, chemistry 

 and biology. Physics and chemistry af- 

 ford a systematic body of knowledge as 

 abundant for instruction, as definitive al- 

 most, as mathematics itself; and biology, 

 young as it is, has already supplied us 

 with a scheme of physical life which lifts 

 its study to the place of a distinctive dis- 

 cipline. These great bodies of knowledge 

 claim their place at the foundation of lib- 

 eral training, not merely for our informa- 

 tion, but because they afford us direct 

 introduction into the most essential ana- 

 lytical and rational processes of scientific 

 study, impart penetration, precision, can- 

 dor, openness of mind, and afford the 

 close contacts of concrete thinking. And 

 there stand alongside of these geology and 

 astronomy, whose part in general culture, 

 aside from their connection with physics, 

 mechanics and chemistry, is to apply to the 

 mind the stimulation which comes from 

 being brought into the presence and in 

 some sort into the comprehension of stu- 

 pendous, systematized physical fact— from 

 seeing nature in the mass and system of 

 her might and structure. These, too, are 

 essential parts of the wide scheme which 

 the college must plot out. And when we 

 have added to these the manifold discipline 



