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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXII. No. 826 



students. How I happened to go to him 

 was as follows : 



Unluclr^ — as they appeared to me at the 

 time, but lucky as I look back upon them 

 — were my own early flounderings and 

 blunderings in seeking the true method of 

 education. Huxley has observed of his 

 "Voyage of the Rattlesnake" that it is a 

 good thing to get down to the bare bones of 

 existence. The same is true of self-educa- 

 tion. As compared with the hosts of to- 

 day, few men in 1877 knew how to guide 

 the graduate youth; the Johns Hopkins 

 was still nascent; the creative force of 

 Louis Agassiz had spent itself in produc- 

 ing the first school of naturalists, including 

 the brilliant William James. One learned 

 one's errors through falling into pitfaUs. 

 "With two companions I was guided by a 

 sort of blind instinct to feel that the most 

 important thing in life was to make a dis- 

 covery of some kind. On consulting one 

 of our most forceful and genial professors 

 his advice was negative and discouraging: 

 "Young men," he said, "go on with your 

 studies for ten or twelve years until you 

 have covered the whole subject; you will 

 then be ready for research of your own." 

 There appeared to be something wrong 

 about this, although we did not know ex- 

 actly what. "We disregarded the advice, 

 left the laboratory of this professor, and at 

 the end of the year did succeed in writing 

 a paper which subsequently attracted the 

 attention of Huxley and was the indirect 

 means of an introduction to Darwin. It 

 was a lame product, but it was ours, and 

 in looking back upon it, one feels Touch- 

 stone's comment upon Audrey: 



A poor virgin, Sir, 



An ill favored thing, Sir, 



But mine own. 



I shall present in this brief address only 

 one idea, namely, the lesson of Huxley's 

 life and the result of my own experience 



is that productive thinking is the chief 

 means as well as the chief end of education, 

 and that the natural evolution of education 

 will be to develop this kind of thought 

 earlier and earlier in the life of the stu- 

 dent. 



One of the most marvelous of the mani- 

 fold laws of evolution is what is called 

 "acceleration." By this law the begin- 

 ning of an important organ like the eye of 

 the chick, for example, is thrust forward 

 into a very early stage of embryonic de- 

 velopment. This is, first, because the eye is 

 a very complex organ and needs a long 

 time for development, and second because 

 the fully formed eye of most animals is 

 needed immediately at birth. I predict 

 that the analogy in the evolution of edu- 

 cation will be very close. Productive 

 thinking may be compared to the eye; it 

 is needed by the student the moment he 

 graduates, or is hatched so to speak; it is 

 now developed only in the graduate schools ; 

 it is such an integral and essential part of 

 education that the spirit of it is destined 

 to be " accelerated, " or thrust forward 

 into the opening and preparatory years. 



If the lines of one's life were to be cast 

 afresh, if by some metempsychosis one were 

 moulded into what is known as a "great 

 educator," a man of conventions and plat- 

 forms, and were suddenly to become more 

 or less responsible for 3,000 minds and 

 souls, productive thinking, or the "centrif- 

 ugal method" of teaching would not be 

 postponed to graduation or thereafter, but 

 would begin with the freshman, yes, 

 among these humble men of low estate ! It 

 may be apropos to recall a story told of 

 President McCosh, of Princeton, a man 

 who inspired all his students to production 

 and enlivened them with a constant flow of 

 humor. On one occasion he invited his 

 predecessor, ex-President McLean, to offer 

 prayers in the college chapel. Dr. Mc- 



