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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXII. No. 835 



tern of competitive examinations. Yet this is 

 still more truly the atmosphere of old Cambridge 

 to-day than of any of our American institutions. 

 It would be an interesting subject to debate 

 whether we could nurture such a man; whether 

 Darwin, were he entered at a Columbia, a Har- 

 vard or a Princeton, could develop mentally as 

 Charles Darwin did at Cambridge in 1817. I be- 

 lieve that conditions for the favorable nurture of 

 such a mind are not with us. They are repose, 

 time for continuous thought, respect for the man 

 of brains and of individuality, and of such 

 peculiar tastes as Darwin displayed in his avidity 

 for collecting beetles, freedom from mental con- 

 vention, general sympathy for nature, and above 

 all order in the world of ideas. If the genial 

 mind can not find the kindred mind, it can not 

 develop. Many American school and college men 

 are laughed out of the finest promptings of their 

 natures. In short, I believe our intellectual en- 

 vironment would be distinctly against a young 

 Darwin of to-day. 



These words of Osborn hint at certain 

 weaknesses in our American educational 

 system to which I shall refer later on. 

 Meanwhile, I do not think that it is the 

 whole truth, nor wholly the truth. If a 

 Darwin were to be laughed out of his 

 career, the event would have occurred 

 in the English secondary school, where he 

 was in fact nicknamed "Gas" on account 

 of his interest in chemistry. And it is 

 certainly not true that in the old Cam- 

 bridge, or the new Cambridge, there is as 

 high a valuation of unexpected originality 

 as the suppositious young Darwin would 

 find to-day in America. 



I think that the elements which make up 

 a Darwin can be reduced to three, whereof 

 the first far overtops the others, the hered- 

 ity of great genius being far more rare 

 than one would infer from Osborn 's words, 

 and far more difficult to mar or discourage. 



What, then, are the elements that we 

 unite to make a great investigator, not of 

 Darwin's class, let us say, for that comes 

 only with many centuries, but a naturalist 

 not unworthy to come in as a foot-note to a 



page on Darwinism? The fundamental 

 elements, as I take it, are these three: 

 First, the original material, to which we 

 may look to heredity alone; second, meet- 

 ing nature at first hand and meeting her 

 early and persistently; third, the personal 

 inspiration and enthusiasm derived from 

 some great teacher. In Darwin's case, the 

 raw material was of the highest order, the 

 best which amphimixis ever put together. 

 This material no university could spoil, 

 though Cambridge and Edinburgh con- 

 fessedly tried their best. Beetles, race- 

 horses, flowers and trees, contact with 

 nature — these kept up an enthusiasm pro- 

 moted rather than checked by the hopeless 

 dreariness of his university exercises. 

 These gave the second element, and the 

 third came from the privilege of the young 

 Darwin to be "the man who walked with 

 Henslow, " and later with Sedgwick also. 

 In the American universities, heredity 

 plays her part; her limitations, whatever 

 they may be, are racial, and our stock is 

 good. Nature is close at hand, closer than 

 in the old world, and whosoever is really 

 filled with zeal to know her has not far to 

 go. Agassiz remained in America because 

 in America he was nearer to his studies 

 than he could be in Europe. Here "na- 

 ture was rich, while tools and workmen 

 were few and traditions none." All this 

 our American universities offer in abun- 

 dance. The final question is, then, that of 

 personality, and the question I would raise 

 is whether in accumulating tools and tra- 

 ditions even as in Europe, we are not fail- 

 ing in this regard. Are we not losing sight 

 of the man, of the thing above all others 

 which goes to the shaping of a great nat- 

 uralist or a great scholar in any field?' 

 We may say that the machinery of our uni- 

 versities is developed not for the shaping 

 of a Darwin, but for the moulding of very 

 commonplace models. But so it is every- 



