Apeil 21, 1911] 



SCIENCE 



597 



ture seem to threaten an antagonism which 

 has no proper foundation in experience or 

 philosophy." And although the study of 

 the classics has never formed part of the 

 institute's courses, history, economics, lan- 

 guages and literature enter into its cur- 

 ricula far more extensively than is gen- 

 erally supposed. 



Apart from his appreciation of the value 

 of all sound learning, Rogers saw clearly 

 that the whole controversy as to the relative 

 merits of science and the classics in the field 

 of education missed the mark by placing 

 the emphasis in the wrong place. He 

 understood that when one gets to the root 

 of things in education, the method rather 

 than the subject is of supreme importance, 

 and his insistence on the value of method in 

 teaching was the cardinal doctrine in his 

 creed and the one that has contributed most 

 to the success of the institute. Doubtless 

 his knowledge of the history of science 

 turned his thoughts in this direction. He 

 must have pondered over the question, as 

 every serious student has done, why 

 throughout the ages the world stood so stUl 

 in the realm of science. It was not for lack 

 of intellectual power, for no one who has 

 examined the matter can fail to recognize 

 that there really were giants of old. The 

 failure came through attacking the prob- 

 lems by the wrong method. And Rogers 

 concluded that much of the failure in 

 education was due to similar causes. What 

 method, then, is the right one ? His funda- 

 mental idea here was not original with 

 Rogers. It has been clearly expressed 

 before, but rarely, if ever, adopted defin- 

 itely as the basis of educational method and 

 applied systematically throughout. The 

 idea is familiar to us aU to-day, the idea of 

 learning hy doing. ' ' How can a man learn 

 to know himself?" asked Goethe. "Never 

 by thinking, but by doing." Add to this 

 the doctrine of Carlyle that "the end of 



man is an action and not a thought, though 

 it were the noblest," and you have the 

 whole thing in a nutshell. Carlyle is often 

 quoted as having said that the modern uni- 

 versity is a great library. He would have 

 been truer to his own doctrine if he had 

 said that the modern university is a great 

 laboratory. "The institute," General 

 Walker was fond of saying, " is a place not 

 for boys to play but for men to work." 

 Boys and men alike learn most effectively 

 by working for themselves, and the do4t- 

 yourself method has been, I believe, the 

 greatest factor in the success of this insti- 

 tute of technology. 



Whatever be the explanation, there can 

 be no doubt about the fact of its success. 

 It is not merely that the institute is now 

 the largest institution of its kind in this 

 country, and as regards the extent and 

 variety of its courses and equipment, the 

 most nearly complete in the world. It is 

 not merely that it has grown so that there 

 are a hundred students to-day for every 

 one that took the preliminary course 

 scarcely fifty years ago, and that amongst 

 these students there are men drawn by its 

 reputation from the greatest universities 

 of England, France and Germany, as well 

 as from the leading schools and colleges 

 throughout this union. It is not merely 

 that its teaching staff has expanded so that 

 it contains to-day more than two hundred 

 and fifty men, and that amongst its hun- 

 dred professors are to be found many men 

 of prominence, and not a few of national 

 and indeed international reputation. It is 

 not merely that amongst its graduates, 

 there are men of the front rank as pioneers 

 of knowledge in the field of pure science, 

 nor that its ten thotisand alumni have 

 played so great a part in the development 

 of the nation's industry and commerce, 

 and in the preservation of the public 

 health. The most striking fact, when one 



