646 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXV. No. 643 



tects, physicians, pharmacists, or dentists, 

 but to furnish men thoroughly grounded 

 in the principles upon which the success- 

 ful and scientific practise of these pro- 

 fessions depends. 



All this will undoubtedly be regarded 

 as purely academic theorizing by the Grad- 

 grinds who arrogate to themselves the ad- 

 jective 'practical.' But which is more 

 practical, more beneficial to the individual 

 and to the community which he serves, the 

 education of an empiric or the training 

 of a scientist? Surely there can be no 

 hesitation in the answer. Montaigne said, 

 long ago, 'To know by rote is not to 

 know.' It would be instructive to test 

 our university education by this standard 

 and ascertain how far, by precept and ex- 

 ample, it is, especially in the professional 

 schools, following the straight and narrow 

 path. To what extent is the desire for 

 immediate financial success, and that on 

 no modest scale, affecting the work of our 

 students? Are our faculties yielding to 

 this desire on the part of the students and 

 in their teaching placing more stress on 

 the application than on the principle? 

 And to what extent is this same desire 

 for financial prosperity calling our teach- 

 ers from investigation to more lucrative 

 employments and impairing their useful- 

 ness both as preceptors and as exemplars? 

 I have not considered these questions as 

 part of my theme, and will leave them with 

 you for private consideration. 



In the development of investigation as 

 a prime function of the university, there 

 is a danger, however, that its advance- 

 ment may be pushed too rapidly, in the 

 sense that men, too slightly grounded in 

 the principles of their science, may be 

 pushed into special lines of study and that 

 university education may mean the train- 

 ing of narrow specialists rather than the 

 development of broad, scholarly minds. 

 Lowell said of Harvard that he "would 



rather the college should turn out one of 

 Aristotle's four-square men, capable of 

 holding his own in whatever field he may 

 be cast, than a score of lop-sided ones 

 developed abnormally in one direction," 

 and surely this is what each of us would 

 wish for his alma mater or for the college 

 in which his lot is cast. It is a short- 

 sighted policy that forces or even allows 

 immature men to enter upon investigation. 

 It may increase the quantity of the pro- 

 ductive work of the university, but the 

 increase will be at the expense of the 

 quality, and in the long run will redound 

 to the credit neither of the university nor 

 of the individual members of its staff. 

 And, after all, the investigator is born, not 

 made, and for the men who have not an 

 innate aptitude for investigation, 



Selbst Pallas kommt als Mentor nicht zu Ehren, 

 Am Ende treiben sie's naeh ihrer Weise fort 

 Als wenn sie nicht erzogen waren. 



All students can not be investigators in 

 the ordinary sense of that word, but all 

 should be trained along broad lines, trained 

 to look to original and reliable sources for 

 their information, trained to seek for the 

 causes of phenomena and events, trained, 

 in short, in the methods of the investigator. 

 Only after a student has successfully 

 undergone such a discipline, and surely 

 the ordinary undergraduate course is none 

 too long for its completion, should he be 

 allowed to undertake investigation. The 

 tendency to make a certain number of 

 years of college training a condition for 

 entrance upon a professional education in 

 medicine is one of the most hopeful signs 

 for the progress of that science, and for- 

 tunate are the schools now in a position to 

 demand a complete collegiate course as a 

 preliminary to the professional education. 

 Let us hope that the example of the medi- 

 cal schools will soon be followed by other 

 professional departments and that for all 

 professional studies, including under that 



