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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXVI. No. 671 



the subjective faculties which are the real 

 entities because they are the springs of 

 action. 



Let us look at this matter a little more 

 closely, observing at the outset that for the 

 carrying on of original investigation in 

 most departments of science, and more es- 

 pecially in the physical sciences, money, 

 and much of it, may be required. But I 

 am not considering the needs of the inves- 

 tigator, nor the cost of carrying on his 

 work, which may be great, ought to be met, 

 and generally is, in one way or another, 

 provided for. I have more particularly in 

 mind the needs of institutions like our own, 

 in which the work is mainly educational, 

 not creative, and in which pupils are seek- 

 ing to acquire some small part of the sum 

 total of the world 's accumulated and classi- 

 fied knowledge. Such pupils form the vast 

 majority of those who attend our common 

 schools and academies, our colleges and so- 

 called universities, and our technical and 

 professional schools as well. The average 

 teacher in these institutions is himself not 

 a genius, for the world's supply of such 

 would scarce suffice to fill the places, but 

 if he be competent and conscientious he is 

 fulfilling a true mission, and the great work 

 of education is carried on by teachers of 

 this class. If he be deficient in those quali- 

 ties which enable the born teacher to uplift 

 his pupils, develop latent capacities, stimu- 

 late lagging energies, and broaden their 

 mental outlook, so much the worse for him 

 and his pupils, but his work is not to be 

 condemned because much of it is but the 

 repetition to successive classes of the rudi- 

 ments of knowledge. He is dealing with 

 the average intellect and with ordinary 

 needs, and his work may be humble but it 

 is not contemptible. It is honorable and 

 all-important, and lies at the very root of 

 our civilization and the intellectual prog- 

 ress of the race. Geniuses are bom, not 



made. They soon outrun their instructors, 

 and have indeed little need of them, being 

 generally their own best teachers and the 

 teachers of others. No complex apparatus, 

 nor educational system, can create or even 

 do much to develop them, and the chief 

 function of the teacher, and main aim of 

 education, must ever be to classify, pre- 

 serve, render available and transmit the 

 world's knowledge to the largest number 

 of people who will receive it. 



Now to carry on much of this work of 

 education extraordinary facilities are not 

 necessarily required. Ordinary results are 

 secured by the employment of ordinary 

 means. Unless we establish a standard of 

 ideal and absolute excellence and perfec- 

 tion, and demand that the teacher shall 

 conform to such standard or cease his 

 teaching, we must needs be patient and 

 tolerant of present, though imperfect, con- 

 ditions. To abolish schools whatever their 

 grade, because the teaching force is not of 

 the highest, the equipment not of the best, 

 and the results obtained not entirely satis- 

 factory, would be folly indeed. And yet 

 this is essentially what some idealists would 

 seem to advise. "What shall be thought, for 

 instance, of the sanity of a critic who has 

 said at a conference of state medical ex- 

 amining boards recently held in Chicago, 

 that of the one hundred and fifty medical 

 schools in this country only six were what 

 they ought to be. We may well inquire of 

 this critical essayist — whose opinion as to 

 what medical schools "ought to be" is to 

 be taken? Are we to assume that the 

 school with which the critic is connected is 

 one of the six that are what they "ought 

 to be"? If so, does it represent perfec- 

 tion ? The absurdity of such utterances is 

 the more clearly seen when we consider how 

 far short of perfection are the results of all 

 human endeavor. Churches, social organ- 

 izations and philanthropies, legislative 



