172 



SCIENCE 



[N. 8. Vol. XXXVIII. No. 971 



cool, calm abstractioa which may well have 

 been grateful even to Greeks weary of a 

 refined anthropomorphism. 



All through the dark and the middle 

 ages interpretations of nature more or less 

 anthropomorphic and childlike remained 

 common. Shakespeare is deeply tinged with 

 them, while Francis Bacon, catching cold 

 and dying from his famous experiment on 

 the cold storage of poultry, stands out as 

 even more original for this than as the 

 author of the "Novum Organum. " It is 

 the glory of the Renaissance that it began 

 the age of experiment. Hippocrates had 

 displayed something of the modern spirit, 

 but he was born too soon. Roger Bacon 

 had it in fuller measure and paved the 

 way for Gutenberg and Copernicus and 

 Leonardo da Vinci and Columbus and Gil- 

 bert and Magellan. In the sixteenth and 

 seventeenth centuries for the first time in 

 history a succession of ardent students in- 

 vestigated, and in our modern fashion in- 

 terpreted, the external world. 



Thenceforward events moved rapidly. 

 Galileo and Kepler were followed by Harvey 

 and Boyle and Newton; the telescope, the 

 thermometer, the barometer and the com- 

 pound microscope came into being ; scientific 

 societies sprang up and the modern order 

 began. Old interpretations gradually 

 passed away. All things gradually be- 

 came new. Matter and energy in myriad 

 forms and combinations replaced the gods 

 of old, with the result that since the time 

 of Newton man has looked out upon the 

 world about him, without fear and as if 

 upon the face of a friend. 



Teaching must forever recapitulate and 

 epitomize the achievements of the race. 

 Consciously or unconsciously it acts .along 

 the lines of the biogenetic law. Beginning 

 with the child who thinks as a child, it 



offers to him fairy tales in which nature is 

 personified and encourages (note the word) 

 him to see in things about him a life 

 akin to his own. Then comes the awaken- 

 ing, when Santa Claus becomes a benevo- 

 lent myth and dolls are discovered to be 

 stuffed with sawdust. Next follows the 

 slow recognition of earth and sky, of sun, 

 moon and stars as inanimate objects, and 

 finally the discovery of law and order in 

 the universe. 



To facilitate and abbreviate this process 

 and to ensure a sound result, teachers of 

 natural philosophy in the old days per- 

 formed experiments before their classes. 

 Then came the teaching laboratory, not so 

 much as a workshop as a place for demon- 

 stration, experiment and research. The 

 real workshop or laboring place is oftenest 

 none of these, but simply a space in which 

 routine operations of one or various kinds 

 are done over and over again for profit, as, 

 for example, in a shoeshop, a box factory 

 or a cotton mill. The college laboratory 

 of physics and biology is not, and never 

 should be, this sort of workshop. It is 

 rather a place where such demonstrations 

 of principles or processes are made as shall 

 serve for education rather than commerce. 

 A place where old and perhaps famous 

 experiments, chosen for their educational 

 value, can be performed with and by suc- 

 cessive classes, and where investigations 

 that promise to yield new or improved re- 

 sults can be prosecuted under favorable 

 conditions. It supplies the room, the appa- 

 ratus, the power, the raw materials and 

 especially expert and wise guidance, by 

 means of which a personal knowledge of 

 nature can be gained in orderly fashion, 

 and a fundamental and lasting training 

 effectively acquired. It is an indispensable 

 tool or instrument with which to gain rapid 

 and intimate personal acquaintance with 

 nature and the laws of nature. It should 



