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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXI. No. 799 



tainly true that it does not accomplish all 

 we have expected of it, a question we can 

 not consider at the present time. Many 

 pei-sons have attempted to say what this 

 same liberal education ought to consist of. 

 In my opinion we may seek far and yet 

 find no better definition than that given by 

 Huxley. He said : 



That man, I thiak, has had a liberal education 

 who has been so trained in youth that his body 

 is the ready servant of his will, and does with 

 ease and pleasure all the work that, as a mech- 

 anism, it is capable of; whose intellect is a cold 

 clear logic engine, with all its parts of equal 

 strength and in smooth working order; ready 

 like a steam engine, to be turned to any kind of 

 work, and spin the gossamers as well as forge the 

 anchors of the mind; whose mind is stored with 

 a knowledge of the great and fundamental truths 

 of nature and the laws of her operations; one 

 who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, 

 but whose passions are trained to come to heel 

 by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender con- 

 science; who has learned to love all beauty, 

 whether of nature or of art, to hate all vileness, 

 and to respect others as himself. 



Such an education as this Tufts College 

 will give you if you do your part ; such an 

 education as this will prepare you for any 

 vocation and, better still, will furnish you 

 with the general knowledge which will en- 

 able you to select your eventual occupation 

 understandingly. But remember too, as 

 Gibbons says, that: "Every one has two 

 educations, one which he receives from 

 others and one, more important, which he 

 gives himself." Do not neglect this self- 

 education. 



The earlier in your college course you 

 are enabled to choose your profession, the 

 better it will be for you, because early de- 

 cision will enable you to choose your elect- 

 ive studies in such a manner as to bear 

 directly upon your professional work. Mr. 

 Plexner in an article in Science has said 

 that "statistics roughly compiled seem to 

 indicate that perhaps seventy-five per cent. 



of the members of the first-year law classes 

 at Columbia and Harvard knew while in 

 college that they would study law after- 

 wards," and this would certainly indicate 

 that an earnest student should be able to 

 make his decision early enough to take ad- 

 vantage of the college offerings. Unfor- 

 tunately it is the case that many college 

 men form false ideals of what the profes- 

 sions really are. They idealize them from 

 too narrow a view point, and slowly learn- 

 ing that they are different in a practical 

 way from the conceptions they have 

 formed, they become dissatisfied with them. 

 They become, as it were, the round pegs in 

 the square holes. They do not fit. They 

 have chosen professions for which they ai-e 

 unsuited. This idealization of the profes- 

 sion is especially true of those contem- 

 plating the study of medicine. If we could 

 look into the different aspirants' minds and 

 see depicted there the different ideals that 

 each one had formed, I am sure we should 

 find a strange and incongruous society of 

 physicians ! 



But, on the other hand, we should find 

 that all had idealized certain qualities, 

 though in different proportions. One man 

 sees himself as the noted surgeon dashing 

 about the country in his high-power motor, 

 performing miraculous operations with 

 curiously shaped instruments, and reaping 

 a huge harvest of professional fees. 

 Another sees himself the fashionable 

 consultant, the Doctor Firmin, concern- 

 ing whom Thackeray has told us so 

 much, without whose approval and ad- 

 vice no one who is any one (at least so 

 far as his bank account is concerned), can 

 pass conventionally to the grave. Another 

 pictures himself as the man of sci- 

 ence working in his laboratory and dis- 

 covering the cure of cancer, which shall 

 make him for all time a benefactor of the 

 human race ; or he sees himself the special- 



