Maech 17, 1911] 



SCIENCE 



405 



a view to encourage and stimulate scientific 

 investigation. A very moderate amount of 

 class instruction and other duties should be 

 demanded of the members of the faculty, 

 and students should be sufficiently mature 

 and earnest to work without compulsion 

 and with little direction under the guid- 

 ance and inspiration of the men who are 

 doing real original work. 



The ease of the undergraduate school is 

 fundamentally different. I believe that 

 the prominence given to research in many 

 undergraduate schools is a positive injury 

 to the student; his instructors are chosen 

 on account of their ability or promise as 

 investigators instead of their qualifications 

 as teachers, and even the student himself 

 is encouraged or forced to undertake so- 

 called research with entirely inadequate 

 training, both as regards breadth and 

 depth. The undergraduate years should 

 be employed in acquiring a well-balanced 

 knowledge of the fundamentals of the stu- 

 dent's specialty, and an acquaintance with 

 the elements of many allied subjects, to- 

 gether with a working grasp of such tools 

 as modern languages, to make professional 

 literature accessible at first hand, mathe- 

 matics, for the mental training and grasp 

 of the quantitative and statistical treat- 

 ment of all studies, and every undergrad- 

 uate student should give such attention to 

 history, literature, and economics as to 

 make him an intelligent citizen and man of 

 culture. 



Only when this has been in a measure 

 accomplished — and in looking back to our 

 own college days we realize that a mere 

 beginning had been made when we gradu- 

 ated — is the student in a position to profit- 

 ably undertake research with a proper 

 appreciation of what he is doing and how 

 to do it, so that it is really research for 

 him and he is not merely a pair of hands 

 under the direction of another's brain. 



The effectiveness of a scientific investigator 

 is generally proportional to the thorough- 

 ness of his preparation; too many attempt 

 to discover new truths before they have 

 grasped those already discovered by others. 



In many institutions one of the require- 

 ments for graduation is called a thesis, and 

 such a tradition is difficult to dislodge, but 

 I think the name is unfortunately preten- 

 tious and is apt to mislead the student into 

 thinking himself more advanced than the 

 facts justify; it savors of the same spirit 

 that induces the high school to ape the 

 college in so many ways, in its pernicious 

 fraternities and even in having a "bac- 

 calaureate" service — doubtless to celebrate 

 the fact that the boys about to graduate 

 are still unmarried; such unwholesome 

 symptoms are usually most conspicuous in 

 institutions with the least merit. The 

 preparation of an undergraduate thesis 

 may be a valuable item in the course if it 

 is not so administered as to waste the stu- 

 dent's time, narrow his mind and swell his 

 head. I believe its most valuable feature 

 is its compelling him to go to original 

 sources for information, namely, library 

 work. Too many students graduate with- 

 out this experience and with a knowledge 

 of books limited to the prescribed texts 

 employed in the course. To choose a sub- 

 ject of real interest to the student and of 

 suitably narrow scope, and to find out by 

 systematic search in the scientific journals 

 all that is known about it, and then to 

 write an essay in which the information is 

 carefully arranged and well presented, is a 

 task well worth the performance. 



It is entirely laudable for every institu- 

 tion to aim at ever higher goals ; not, how- 

 ever, by raising the entrance requirements 

 beyond the reach of its natural constitu- 

 ent, even at the dictation of some self- 

 appointed board demanding uniformity 

 under diverse conditions, and not by 



