512 



SCIENCE. 



[N.S. Vol. XIX. No. 482. 



in dynamics the directive forces play a prom- 

 inent part. Nor is this necessarily confined 

 to molar mechanics; wherever the generalized 

 equations of Lagrange are proved to be serv- 

 iceable, the significance of the term dE/ds 

 cannot be overlooked. It registers the occur- 

 rence of directive or guiding forces, as a 

 tjrpe, in conjunction with those whose form 

 {d/dt- dE jdv) indicates their relation to 

 changes of energy. Frederick Slate. 



UNrVEESITY OF CALIFORNIA, 



February 24, 1904. .' 



QVOTATWNS. 



PRESIDENT ELIOT. 



' Nature's patient ways shame hasty little 

 man,' a sentence from one of President 

 Eliot's lectures, is the keynote to much of his 

 work; for he has made nature's patient ways 

 his own. He celebrates to-morrow (March 

 20) his seventieth birthday, and this year, 

 also, the thirty-fifth anniversary of his presi- 

 dency of Harvard. For an estimate of his 

 achievements this is neither the place nor 

 the time: the limits of an editorial article 

 are too narrow; and his labors are, we trust, 

 far from an end. Serus in ccelum redeat. 

 But we add our hearty congratulations to those 

 of Harvard graduates, friends of learning 

 from all colleges and schools, and worthy citi- 

 zens in every walk of life; and we seize this 

 moment as suitable for dwelling on two or 

 three aspects of President Eliot's career. He 

 stands among the foremost citizens of the 

 United States ; were there a common denomi- 

 nator by which one could measure men of 

 widely different talents and callings, he might 

 rank the very first. This success is indubi- 

 tably due in large part to a power which has 

 wrought, like the force of a glacier, without 

 haste, and without rest. 



It is as an educator that he enjoys the 

 widest fame. Eor more than a third of a 

 century — a period of unexampled material 

 progress — in a country which has leaped for- 

 ward rather than developed, he has been at 

 the head of our oldest and richest university. 

 He has thus enjoyed a unique opportunity to 

 set his stamp upon the educational system of 

 a nation; and this opportunity he has em- 

 ployed to the uttermost. The principles 



which he intended to follow he laid down 

 with precision in his Inaugural Address in 

 1869; from those principles he has nevetr 

 swerved. He declared : " This university rec- 

 ognizes no real antagonism between literature 

 and science, and consents to no such narrow 

 alternatives as mathematics or classics, sci- 

 ence or metaphysics. We would have them 

 all, and at their best." Against the old hard 

 and fast curriculum — " one primer, one cate- 

 chism, one rod for all children " — he set his 

 face unflinchingly, and proceeded to build up 

 the elective system, which at Harvard already 

 rested on a firm foundation. The opposition 

 within his faculty and without was deter- 

 mined, sometimes bitter. His theory that " a 

 well-instructed youth of eighteen can select 

 for himself — not for any other boy, or for the 

 fictitious universal boy, but for himself alone 

 — a better course of study than any college 

 faculty, or any wise man who does not know 

 him and his ancestors and his previous life, 

 can possibly select for him " — this theory was 

 assailed and ridiculed as individualism run 

 mad. But President Eliot held to his course, 

 and he has seen his theory accepted in every 

 important college of the country. He has 

 weathered the storm that raged about him 

 twenty years ago, and has anchored in the 

 desired haven. 



As champion of a movement which put 

 sciences and modern languages in ' fair com- 

 petition ' with the classics, he has urged un- 

 ceasingly more skillful instruction in these 

 new subjects. In his Inaugural, he bluntly 

 told the ' scientific scoffers at gerund grind- 

 ing ' that ' the prevailing methods of teach- 

 ing science the world over, are less intelligent 

 than the methods of teaching language.' Ex- 

 perimentation in the laboratory, original in- 

 vestigation, drill in accurate observations, he 

 has made the burden of many addresses and 

 reports. Moreover, it is owing largely to his 

 efforts that the standard of professional 

 schools has been raised, and that secondary 

 and grammar schools are now reorganizing 

 their programs according to the modern idea 

 of developing the aptitudes of the individual. 

 But it is upon English that he has laid the 

 greatest stress. He began his presidency by 



