NOVEMBEE 8, 1907] 



SCIENCE 



611 



known and none of the living, will be re- 

 membered so long as the history of this 

 school shall endure, for they labored zeal- 

 ously in creating, upbuilding and success- 

 fully maintaining it. We do not recall the 

 fact to find warrant for our present exist- 

 ence, nor can we claim lenient judgment 

 for present performance by reason of dis- 

 tinguished services rendered by our prede- 

 cessors, but we may find both incentive and 

 encouragement in the contemplation of 

 their work, and I take it that it is as true 

 of institutions as of individuals that a line 

 of reputable ancestors is something to be 

 thankful for and on the whole no unim- 

 portant asset. 



The place in which we meet compares 

 but indifferently perhaps with the showy 

 buildings in which many schools are 

 housed. To the newcomer it may not be 

 impressive, but since mind is more than 

 matter, individuals more than piles of 

 brick and mortar, and an elegant material 

 environment in itself no evidence of intel- 

 lectual profundity or productivity in its 

 tenants, you need find in this fact no reason 

 for discouragement. Plato in the groves, 

 Socrates in the streets of Athens and Christ 

 in the market-place, remain types of the 

 true scholar and real teachers of mankind, 

 and while conditions have changed essential 

 truths are in no way altered. Our acad- 

 emies need a better housing than groves 

 afford, and our teachers a more elaborate 

 apparatus than sufficed for ancient phil- 

 osophers, but in our thinking we should 

 take care to estimate things at their real 

 and not at fictitious worth or we shall place 

 too high a value upon material things in 

 the sphere of education and science. Here 

 the real values are incorporeal, intellectual 

 and spiritual, not material and directly con- 

 vertible into dollars, nor are they directly 

 producible by wealth. We stand in a great 

 libraiy, perhaps under the dome of the 



British Museum. Here are a million books 

 collected at great labor and cost from all 

 parts of the world and containing much of 

 its best wisdom, but they are powerless to 

 impart their knowledge to those who mere- 

 ly stand and gaze. And even he who longs 

 to learn that which they hold in store is 

 powerless to employ with real advantage 

 more than the smallest fractional part of 

 their great wealth. This wealth is like the 

 energy potential in the coal deep buried in 

 the earth, which must be mined with great 

 toil, and burned to advantage, to convert 

 it into impelling force and operating en- 

 ergy. Great fortunes, wisely employed, 

 may render incalculable service to man- 

 kind, but it is an idle dream to suppose 

 that dollars are directly convertible into 

 brains, and that great gifts to education 

 necessarily produce results proportional to 

 their extent. Education, which is mental 

 culture and implies a training of the facul- 

 ties and development of the senses, is not 

 on tap to be obtained by the turning of a 

 faucet. When I survey the bewilderingly 

 complex curriculums presented in the an- 

 nouncements of some of our universities I 

 am reminded of the elaborate menu which 

 is placed before the guest at a great hos- 

 telry. Everything is offered and one may 

 choose this, and reject that, as his desires 

 are simple or his greed consuming, but only 

 that which is digested and assimilated 

 serves the purposes of food and becomes a 

 part of the body. Physical gain is not to 

 be measured by the extent of the repast, 

 nor is intellectual gain to be estimated by 

 courses pursued, hours spent, experiments 

 performed, books read, or even examina- 

 tions passed. To hold otherwise is to en- 

 tertain a very material conception and 

 place too high an estimate on the value of 

 the mechanical and material, the objective 

 and external things which may be used to 

 train and develop, but which can not create, 



