704 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXVI. No. 673 



States, for instance, lias more universities 

 than Germany. Why then is the United 

 States behind Germany in this industrial 

 race? The answer, I believe, may be 

 found in the fact that the American uni- 

 versities and colleges as a whole have not 

 until recently fully realized the fact that 

 the old idea of scientific culture in this 

 present materialistic age is not what is de- 

 manded by the nation. University men 

 now fully realize that scientific training of 

 the old culture type, and more especially in 

 chemistry, is worthless to the nation and 

 worthless to the individual except in so far 

 as the mental discipline goes. But simple 

 discipline is not the sole aim in the study 

 of any science. It must embrace experi- 

 ence and a true knowledge of the subject, 

 such as will enable the individual to apply 

 the principles in practical life. It is only 

 when this training is applied that its full 

 value is appreciated by the individual him- 

 self and by the nation. Didactic chem- 

 istry as taught twenty-five or thirty years 

 ago can no longer be accepted by the uni- 

 versities of to-day. A glance into the his- 

 tory of chemistry will show that no scien- 

 tific investigation has ever been made, 

 either in the so-called field of pure or in 

 that of industrial chemistry, which has not 

 had its influence on the material develop- 

 ment of the world. In fact, a discovery in 

 chemistry or, as a matter of fact, in any 

 other science which does not leave its im- 

 pression upon the world, which does not help 

 to bring humanity nearer ideality, from 

 both the social and industrial standpoint, 

 which does not directly raise the standard of 

 civilization, is not worthy of being called 

 a discovery. Our universities and colleges 

 as a whole do not at the present time fully 

 appreciate this fact. Our universities are 

 just learning that the scientist and tech- 

 nologist are not born, but made by half a 

 life-time of hard study, and that the uni- 

 versities alone are able to offer this scien- 



tific training. The teaching of science in 

 our universities, therefore, is paramount in 

 the industrial and material development of 

 our country. 



In taking up the teaching of chemistry 

 in the United States, I can not, I think, 

 do better than to give a brief outline of the 

 conditions under which chemistry has been 

 taught in some of our state universities 

 during the past twenty-five years. 



It is a striking but lamentable fact that 

 until the last few years the practical chem- 

 ist of the United States was essentially a 

 self-made man. He had perhaps taken a 

 course or two of chemistry in his university 

 or college, but rarely had he studied chem- 

 istry from the applied standpoint. There- 

 fore, after graduating he was compelled to 

 begin as an apprentice and to spend several 

 years in learning the things which should 

 have been taught to him in his university 

 course. University work twenty-five years 

 ago meant, in a large majority of state 

 universities, the study of Latin, Greek, 

 mathematics and history, with a smattering 

 of modern languages. Seldom did a uni- 

 versity curriculum include the study of 

 science except so far as it represented 

 simple didactic training. Applied chem- 

 istry was not considered worthy of being 

 placed in the college curriculum. 



I distinctly remember my first impres- 

 sions of chemistry, as offered in one of our 

 state universities. "We studied general 

 chemistry by the old didactic methods. 

 Our first lesson was to commit to memory 

 the atomic weights of the common elements. 

 (Imagine a man in the University of Illi- 

 nois spending the first week of his general 

 chemistry course in committing to memory 

 the atomic weights.) We had no labora- 

 tory experiments except those performed 

 by the professor, and these were performed 

 in such a way that the underlying truths 

 were entirely lost to the student. In fact, 

 the only experiments in this whole course 



