574 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXII. Xo. 826 



There is no revolution in the contrary or 

 efferent design. Like all else in the world 

 of thought, it is in the germ at least as old 

 as the Greeks and its illustrious pioneer 

 was Socrates (469-399 b.c), who led the 

 approach to truth not by laying down the 

 law himself, but by means of answers re- 

 quired of his students. The efferent prin- 

 ciple, moreover, is in the program of Perry 

 and many other reformers to-day. 



How do you yourself stand on this ques- 

 tion? Is your idea of a good student that 

 of a good "receptacle"? Do you regard 

 your instructors as useful grain hoppers 

 whose duty it is to gather kernels of wis- 

 dom from all sources and direct them into 

 your receptive minds? Are you content 

 to be a sort of psychic Sacculina, a vege- 

 tative animal, your mind a vast sack with 

 two apertures, one for the incurrent, the 

 other for the outcurrent of predigested 

 ideas? If so, all your mental organs of 

 combat and locomotion will atrophy. Do 

 you put your faith in reading or in 

 book knowledge? If so, you should 

 know that not a five-foot shelf of books, 

 not even the ardent reading of a fifty- 

 foot shelf aided by prodigious mem- 

 ory will give you that enviable thing 

 called culture, because the yard stick of 

 this precious quality is not what you take 

 in but what you give out, and this from 

 the subtle chemistry of your brain must 

 have passed through a mental metabolism 

 of your own so that you have lent some- 

 thing to it. To be a man of culture you 

 need not be a man of creative power, be- 

 cause such men are few, they are born not 

 made ; but you must be a man of some degree 

 of centrifugal force, of individuality, of 

 critical opinion, who must make over what 

 is read into conversation and into life. 

 Yes, one little idea of your own well ex- 

 pressed has a greater cultural value than 

 one hundred ideas you absorb; one page 



that you produce, finely written, new to 

 science or to letters and really worth 

 reading, outweighs for your own purposes 

 the five-foot shelf. On graduation, presto, 

 all changes, then of necessity must yoiir 

 life be independent and centrifugal; and 

 just in so far as it has these powers will it 

 be successful; just in so far as it is merely 

 imitative will it be a failure. 



Against the centripetal theory of ac- 

 quiring culture Huxley revolted with all 

 his might. His daily practise in the cen- 

 trifugal school was in the genesis of opin- 

 ion; and he incessantly practised the pre- 

 cept that forming one's own opinion is 

 infinitely better than borrowing one. Our 

 sophisticated age discourages originality 

 of view because of the plenitude of a 

 ready-made supply of editorials, of re- 

 views, of reviews of reviews, of critiques, 

 comments, translations and cribs. Study 

 political speeches, not editorials about 

 them; read original debates, speeches and 

 reports. If you purpose to be a naturalist 

 get as soon as you can at the objects them- 

 selves; if you would be an artist, go to 

 your models; if a writer, on the same 

 principle take your authors at first hand, 

 and, after you have wrestled with the 

 texts, and reached the full length of your 

 own fathom line, then take the fathom line 

 of the critic and reviewer. Do not trust to 

 mental peptones. Carry the independent, 

 inquisitive, skeptical and even rebellious 

 spirit of the graduate school well down 

 into undergraduate life, and even into 

 school life. If you are a student force 

 yourself to think independently; if a 

 teacher compel j'our youth to express their 

 own minds. In listening to a lecture weigh 

 the evidence as presented, cultivate a polite 

 scepticism, not affected but genuine, keep a 

 running fire of interrogation marks in your 

 mind, and you will finally develop a mind 

 of your own. Do not climb that mountain 



