SCIENCE 



Friday, November 5, 1915 



CONTENTS 



Science and Liberal Education-: Professor 

 Edmund B. Wilson 625 



Plain Writing : Dr. Geoege Otis Smith .... 630 



Soil Fertility: J. E. EuSH 632 



The Thirteenth New England Intercollegiate 

 Geological Excursion: Professor H. F. 

 Cleland 634 



The Willard Gibbs Professorship of Besearch 

 in Pure Chemistry : W. A. Hamor 636 



Frederic Ward Putnam 638 



Scientific Notes and News 639 



University and Educational News 642 



Discussion and Correspondence: — ■ 

 Electromotive Phenomena and Membrane 

 Permeability: Dr. Jacques Loeb. WJiat 

 is Hellenism? Professor E. B. Copeland. 

 Universities and Unpreparedness: Dk. 

 Stewart Paton 643 



Scientific BooTcs: — 



Gates on The Mutation Factor in Evolu- 

 tion: Professor Bradley Moore Davis. 

 Galloway's Text-booh of /joology: C. W. H. 648 



The Proceedings of the National Academy of 

 Sciences: Pkofessor Edwin Bidwell Wil- 

 son 652 



Special Articles: — ■ 



The Bashing or Pone Shark: De. E. W. 

 Gudger. Labeling Chemical Specimens: C. 

 E. Vail 653 



The American Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science: — 

 Zoology: Professor H. V. Neal 657 



MSB. intended for publication and books, etc., intended for 

 review should be sent to Professor J. McKeen Cattell, Garrison- 

 On-Hudson. N. Y. 



SCIENCE AND LIBERAL EDUCATION^ 

 Several years ago a discussion was car- 

 ried on in one of the London newspapers 

 on that interminable but always interesting 

 question as to what is the best definition of 

 a gentleman. Various answers were sug- 

 gested by different contributors. Some 

 were in the form of citations from our 

 noblest literature — one, as I recall, wa? 

 given in the words of St. Paul, another was 

 taken from Shakespeare, a third from 

 Emerson. The one generally acknowl- 

 edged to be the most effective was, how- 

 ever, phrased in the picturesque vernacular 

 of modern sport. A gentleman, so this an- 

 swer ran, is a man who plays the game. 



As this lingers in the memory it brings 

 a growing sense of broader implications. 

 The definition, evidently, only gives a new 

 turn to the old thought that human life is 

 like a great game that man plays with the 

 world. We recall the striking words in 

 which an illustrious master of modern 

 science once brought this thought to bear 

 upon the problem of education : 



The life, the fortune and the happiness of 

 every one of us depend on our knowing something 

 of the rules of a game infinitely more complicated 

 and difficult than chess. It is a game which has 

 been played for untold ages, each man and woman 

 of us being one of the two players in a game of 

 his or her own. The chess-board is the world, the 

 pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules 

 of the game are what we call the laws of nature. 

 The player on the other side is hidden from us. 

 We know that his play is always fair, just and 

 patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he 

 never overlooks a mistake or makes the smallest 

 allowance for ignorance. To the man who plays 



1 An academic address given at the opening of 

 Columbia University, September 29, 1915. 



