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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXVII. No. 692 



eerned for generations past, is now an ac- 

 complished fact in these United States. 

 That alliance would seem to many so much 

 a matter of course that they will find it 

 difficult to see any new significance in this 

 step of the association. But there are 

 those who, whether they approve or dis- 

 approve, will see in it a notable and char- 

 acteristic stage in the movement of our 

 civilization. 



The conception of the unity of education 

 was with us preliminary to this alliance. 

 So long as there were in the minds of men 

 two distinct forms of education, an ele- 

 mentary education altogether traditional 

 and conservative in character, and a higher 

 education liberal in spirit and concerned 

 with the continuous renewal of knowledge, 

 so long, in a werd, as the higher and the 

 lower education served diverse ends, run- 

 ning counter to each other, just so long 

 that alliance could not be consummated. 

 The higher education was already repre- 

 sented in such societies as this through the 

 members of its several scientific depart- 

 ments; and popular education might be 

 left to go its unscientific way, serving the 

 purpose of a more refined system of police, 

 as Daniel Webster described it. 



Our national instinct, even more than 

 our national convictions, has been working 

 for generations against any such rift in 

 our national education. We have made 

 straight the way from every country school 

 and every kindergarten to the highest uni- 

 versities. This fact is clear and has been 

 widely noted. The related fact has been 

 less often remarked, that in making a plain 

 way for our pupils from the lowest schools 

 to the highest, we have made a plain way 

 for all learning from the highest schools 

 to the lowest. The distinction between 

 school sciences and real sciences is alto- 

 gether repugnant to our civilization. We 

 are not willing that any good knowledge 

 shall be the guarded secret of an intellec- 



tual class. With regard only for such 

 metes and bounds as are natural and in- 

 evitable, we are determined that all learn- 

 ing shall be for all the people. It is hard 

 enough at best to bring science home to the 

 unlearned without taking from it its scien- 

 tific character. But we are committed to 

 the removal of all artificial hindrances to 

 its free course. We are devoted to the 

 effort to bring real and uneorrupted knowl- 

 edge home to all ; and this new educational 

 organization is a new declaration of that 

 purpose and a new agency for carrying it 

 into effect. 



The alliance of science and education is 

 more than an alliance. In our national 

 life these two are one and can not be put 

 asunder. It is sometimes said that scien- 

 tific research is a thing apart from educa- 

 tion; that those engaged in such research, 

 in order to do their best, must keep them- 

 selves as free as possible from the tempta- 

 tion to give instruction. The eminent 

 director of the Carnegie Institution has 

 declared that it is not an educational insti- 

 tution over which he presides. The better 

 agricultural experiment stations of the 

 country, newly endowed under the Adams 

 act of 1906, are seeking by all legitimate 

 means to secure for members of their sev- 

 eral staffs sufficient freedom from lecture 

 engagements to enable them to carry on 

 investigations that require long patience 

 and the severest concentration. Each new 

 foundation providing for research apart 

 from any requirement of regular hours of 

 teaching is welcomed as a new factor in 

 our real scientific development. No one of 

 these things is incompatible with that inti- 

 mate and inevitable connection of science 

 with education. Such provision for free- 

 handed research is indeed requisite, if sci- 

 ence is to do its full part in the great 

 alliance. It is not that each individual 

 investigator shall be expected to give some 

 formal instruction. That is a subordinate 



