APRIL 21, 1911] 



SCIENCE 



595 



the breaking out of hostilities marking the 

 beginning of the great war. The national 

 crisis, of course, turned men's thoughts 

 away from science and from education. 

 About a fortnight after the granting of 

 the charter, Eogers attended a meeting of 

 the Thursday Evening Club, and was 

 called upon to speak on some matter per- 

 taining to science. According to a news- 

 paper report of the time "Professor Rogers 

 very gracefully declined to discuss the 

 topic proposed, but made instead a stirring 

 appeal to the club in favor of providing 

 a regiment of our brave volunteers with 

 knapsacks." Such a time seemed pecu- 

 liarly unpropitious for initiating a new 

 educational movement, and no doubt the 

 war checked the early growth of the insti- 

 tute very seriously. However, after a few 

 years, the nation was ready to turn with 

 undivided mind to the great problems of 

 development, and the seed having been 

 sown earlier in good ground, the institute 

 sprang up rapidly and reaped the harvest 

 of hope engendered by the settlement of 

 the grave moral and political questions to 

 which the war was due. In the quieter 

 field of human activity, the field of thought, 

 the world was experiencing an equally great 

 upheaval. Darwin's great book had just 

 been published, with results of the first 

 magnitude in shaping the lives on which 

 the world of intellect was to move forward 

 for the next half century. Kirchhoff 's idea 

 of spectrum analysis was just opening a 

 new era in physics and in astronomy. Fara- 

 day was nearing the end of his great career, 

 but his splendid discoveries had not yet 

 borne fruit in the field of practise. His 

 work, however, was having its influence on 

 the mind of Maxwell, the greatest of whose 

 scientific achievements was announced in 

 1865, the year in which the institute actu- 

 ally began to work. The world was just 

 entering on a period of remarkable activity 

 in the practical applications of science. 



The scientists were still struggling with 

 the difficulties of cabling. The Boston of 

 those days was somewhat proud of its 

 critical spirit and in 1859 a writer in the 

 Boston Courier proved at great length that 

 all the so-called messages through the At- 

 lantic cables were fictitious, mere shams 

 to save the stock for a time. Edison, who 

 was living in Boston in 1868, and whose 

 son is an under-graduate at this institute 

 to-day, was just beginning his wonderful 

 career as an inventor. A few years later, 

 one of the greatest marvels of scientific 

 achievement, the electric transmission of 

 speech, was to be demonstrated in this very 

 city, indeed, in this very hall, by Alexander 

 Graham Bell, through his invention of the 

 telephone. 



At such a time, and in such a place, an 

 institution devoted to science and its appli- 

 cations had at least an excellent chance of 

 success. The institute would, however, 

 never have achieved what it has, if other 

 forces had not contributed to its success. 

 Some of these have been mentioned earlier ; 

 but there is one of the very first importance, 

 rarely, I think, appreciated at its real 

 value, to which special reference should be 

 made. There has never been any uncer- 

 tainty or indefiniteness as to what the insti- 

 tute is aiming at in its scheme of education. 

 Every serious student of education is 

 struck by the fact that so many schools 

 and colleges drift around, apparently with- 

 out compass or rudder, with no definite 

 idea as to what port they are trying to 

 reach, or how they should go to reach it. 

 Here, at any rate, is an institution that, 

 from the very outset, has had very definite 

 ideas on these matters, whether those ideas 

 be right or wrong. Most of these ideas are 

 set forth in Rogers's "Object and Plan," 

 which forms a charter of the institute not 

 less valuable than that which Governor 

 Andrew signed. At the time of writing it, 

 Rogers was no novice in education. He 



