554 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIV. No. 878 



too commonplace and uninteresting, as well as 

 too difficult, for the elegant mind. The value 

 of history, biography, especially of scientific 

 exposition, while not denied openly, is tacitly 

 belittled as a means of forming the intellect 

 and imparting culture, even to scientific stu- 

 dents. The effect of this on education has 

 been very bad, for while the philologists and 

 pedants have only helped to make literature 

 ridiculous among undergraduates, this has 

 ■done a great deal to bring it into contempt 

 ^among them; for it is not lack of intelligence 

 •or refinement that makes the normal student 

 dislike literature, so much as it is an in- 

 stinctive realization on his part that, as pre- 

 sented by his teachers, it is nothing but effem- 

 inacy and snobbery. The student, on the other 

 hand, who has pretensions to elegance and re- 

 gards literature as something to be cultivated 

 is unrestrained by any standards of sufficient 

 dignity, and instead of being taught not to 

 mistake license for liberty and appetite for 

 aspiration, he is encouraged to do so, and it 

 is said that in some of the larger colleges, 

 where the fashionable element is most numer- 

 ous, Oscar Wilde, whose appeal is only to the 

 shallow or the corrupt, is the favorite author 

 and the commonest model. 



Materialistic preconceptions, therefore, have 

 taken from the intellect of to-day both interest 

 in literature and ability to understand its most 

 characteristic qualities, and have allowed its 

 production and interpretation to fall into the 

 hands of persons who have misrepresented it, 

 so that the misunderstanding of its nature by 

 the public is not to be wondered at. The same 

 preconceptions have identified the typical sci- 

 entist with the inventor of an automatic an- 

 nunciator or cash register, rather thaa with 

 the discoverer of cosmic principles or far- 

 reaching truth, and so have spread an impres- 

 sion that science is of the earth, earthy, while 

 literature is vague, unsubstantial and senti- 

 mental. This being the situation, the ques- 

 tion arises whether or not anything can be 

 done to remedy it. 



The bringing about of the production of 

 enduring literature and the imparting to the 

 public of an ability to detect and appreciate it 



is too great a task to attempt, and circum- 

 stances must be left to effect it. There is 

 every reason, however, to expect a betterment 

 in both these respects soon; for the maturing 

 of American civilization has supplemented the 

 former flamboyant and frothy public opinion 

 with an undercurrent of serious and candid 

 judgment, and has made the national con- 

 science in this country more acute and more 

 earnestly intent on discerning its own weak- 

 nesses and reforming them than it is any- 

 where else in the world. This would of itself 

 presage the production of more serious and 

 more important literature and the development 

 of greater powers of discrimination, even if 

 the deficiency in both these respects in the past 

 generation did not ensure an improvement in 

 the next. But this is only a prospect and 

 applies only to literature; it still remains to 

 be seen what can be done for the present, and 

 what improvement can be wrought in the 

 popular attitude towards science. 



In this latter problem it would seem that 

 most can be done by the scientific men them- 

 selves. It ought to be possible for them to 

 visualize their own objects, and to define their 

 own standards more clearly than they do. It 

 often seems as if they were very punctilious 

 about an etiquette that forbids them to profess 

 any opinions on matters outside their own 

 special field of knowledge. This appears as if 

 it should be a good thing, and it would be 

 beneficial if it were due to modesty alone or to 

 a disinclination to speak without knowledge; 

 but, unfortunately, it is due to a lack of in- 

 terest more than to anything else; and its 

 effect is, first, to present few exhibitions of the 

 aims of science apart from those of the special 

 investigator, which are necessarily restricted 

 and preponderatingly material; and, second, 

 to allow a great deal of pseudo-science to go 

 unexposed to a sufficient extent to destroy its 

 . influence on the public mind. Instead of 

 their present indifference, and sometimes sus- 

 picion and disdain, for all other knowledge 

 except their own special branch, if scientific 

 men would cultivate wider sympathies and 

 endeavor to interest themselves in the progress 

 of science in its entirety and not identify it 



