DECEMBER 10, 1897. ] 
a glimpse of any other branch of knowl- 
edge. In the name of common sense, then, 
how can he be expected to have acquired 
any taste whatever for unrelated and dis- 
similar studies, or to have any conception 
of their relative importance? His advisers 
have been chiefly linguists and mathemati- 
cians, whose ignorance of the natural sci- 
ences is often equalled only by their preju- 
dice against them. It is a fact that the 
larger proportion of those who have become 
students of the natural sciences have had 
their inclination formed despite of rather 
than by means of the university. The 
university seldom intimates to them that 
science studies ought to form an important 
part of their general training. 
The result of all this desultory or biased 
study is that the student usually graduates 
without any clear idea of what he will do 
in life. He rarely studies with any definite 
aim, save that of getting an education, of 
the value of which he has little conception. 
He has been taught to believe that the best 
possible preparation for success in any de- 
partment of life is a liberal education, and 
he does not trouble himself much as what 
his future career may be, resting self-satis- 
fied in the delusive assumption that he will 
be fitted to enter upon anything. 
It is true that the most earnest students 
that we have are those of the professional 
schools. A distinguished teacher of engi- 
neering has said: ‘It is unquestionably a 
fact that the engineering students of our 
colleges do more and harder work for a de- 
gree of equal grade than do the students of 
other departments.’”’ As a teacher of med- 
ical science I know that the average med- 
ical student does fifty per cent. more work 
than those of like capacities in the under- 
graduate arts courses. There can be no 
denial of the fact that the most earnest 
students are those who seek knowledge as 
a direct means of success in life rather than 
for the mere pleasure of its possession. 
SCIENCE. 
867 
I believe, therefore, that the principle, 
now so largely adopted, which permits the 
student to browse about at his own will 
with a nibble here and a bite there, is 
wrong. He should be permitted and re- 
quired early in his life to gaze upon the 
broad field of knowledge and at least to 
taste some of its enjoyments, in order that 
he may find out what his best and easiest 
path will be towards success. Away with 
the medizeval idea that a course in arts fits 
a man for anything. It does not and never 
will, unless it changes very much from what 
it yet is. As we have seen, the degree of 
Bachelor of Science in engineering, to which 
we may also add that in pharmacy, repre- 
sents a larger degree of training and a 
greater knowledge than that possessed by 
the Bachelor of Arts. Why, then, does the 
latter assume such transcendent importance 
in education? Solely upon the claim of 
culture. How many are the sins that are 
committed in thy name! The classical 
student who has devoted five or six of the 
best years of his life to the study of the 
ancient languages, with little or no atten- 
tion given to the modern sciences, is 
dwarfed and narrowed in his conceptions 
of life, even as the scientific student would 
be with no knowledge of the languages. 
Horace Greeley meant just such students as 
these when he said: ‘‘ Of all horned cattle, 
deliver me from the college graduate.”” I by 
no means wish to deprecate the study of 
language and of philology. They are among 
the noblest that the student may undertake 
and well worthy of the ardent pursuit of 
the specialist. So, too, are the professions 
of law and medicine, but no one will pre- 
sume to say that everybody should be a 
lawyer or a physician in order to be cul- 
tured. 
At Yale College not less than nine or ten 
years of foreign language study are re- 
quired for graduation, and not one week of 
any natural science. In the University of 
