July 31, 1903.] 



SCIENCE. 



131 



any one who prefers inferiority in a multi- 

 tude of things rather than eminence in a 

 few things or in one thing? It is not, 

 then, a question of the desirability of 

 special skill, but rather of how that special 

 skill may be best attained. 



I have no patience with those who 

 think, because a student pi'.efers to spend 

 months or years of study in the bacteri- 

 ological laboratory when he might have 

 been devoting his attention to Greek myth- 

 ology, that he is actuated by a commercial 

 spirit, that, because he is doing something 

 well which he will afterwards find useful, 

 he is mercenary. Thirty years ago, how- 

 ever, the average college professor woxild 

 have been shocked by the bare suggestion 

 that his pupils desired to make any prac- 

 tical use of the knowledge he imparted, 

 or that the single inelastic college course 

 of those days was not the best preparation 

 for any vocation in life. 



There is still a prevalent belief, even 

 though much modified from that of former 

 days, that the general training of the intel- 

 lectual powers should continue thi'ough at 

 least three, if not four, years of college life 

 — that specialization should not begin 

 early, if one wishes to accomplish the most 

 in life. That late specialization is not the 

 best in all professions the world has long 

 conceded. "What eminent musician has 

 there been who did not begin his musical 

 training while yet a child? What great 

 artist has thei-e been who first decided upon 

 his life's work after graduation from a 

 college course? How many novelists of 

 wide reputation are there who have been 

 college graduates even ? How few, indeed, 

 are the great leaders in commerce, science 

 or the arts who did not begin their distinc- 

 tive pursuits early in life. Ask an Agassiz, 

 a Darwin or a Huxley, or any one of our 

 able naturalists, when he first began the 

 study of nature, and he will reply that he 

 was always a naturalist. Is it probable 



that such men would have been greater men 

 had they devoted four years of their life 

 to the humanities alone? Is the gi*eat 

 musician less successful because his train- 

 ing may have been at the expense of Greek, 

 mathematics or chemistry? It is true, in- 

 deed, that such men are often one-sided, 

 cranky, as the world calls them, and that 

 undue specialization has robbed them of 

 much of the sweeter part of life, has put 

 them out of joint with the world, has often 

 left them, as Agassiz has said, with no time 

 to make money, but I believe that it is 

 better to have cranky specialists than not 

 to have them at aU. Away with the idea 

 that such men are always bom great; if 

 early specialization is good for men with 

 great powers, it is better for those with 

 small powers. Precocity may be a sign of 

 greatness, but I believe more often great- 

 ness is the result of precocity, the result of 

 early concentration before the plasticity 

 of youth is irrevocably gone. We cheer- 

 fully admit that the violinist nuist begin 

 his special training while yet his muscles 

 are plastic. Is the mind less plastic than 

 the muscles, and is there not as gi-eat need 

 that it should be molded early? You can 

 not teach old dogs new tricks, nor is it 

 often possible to teach a man new tricks 

 after he has become matured. 



Very recently a Chicago author has pub- 

 lished a book in which he endeavors to 

 prove, from the testimony of many promi- 

 nent men of busine.ss, that a general col- 

 lege course is detrimental to success in a 

 business career, and it is well luiown that 

 such successful men as is Carnegie have 

 given assent to such views. Like all such 

 generalizations there may be both truth 

 and falsity in this one. For many men, 

 and by no means the poorer men, I firmly 

 believe that a general college course is det- 

 rimental as preparation for a business 

 career, while to all a special education and 

 a fixed motive in their education are of 



