132 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVIII. Xo. 448. 



benefit. We clearly recognize to-day that 

 the object of higher education is less the 

 acquisition of knowledge than the acquisi- 

 tion of power to use knowledge, and any 

 education which neglects those powers most 

 necessary in a given vocation is sure to be 

 of harm, either, negatively or positively. 



As a rule, I believe that the college edu- 

 cation materially helps towards the largest 

 success in life only when that education is 

 to a greater or less degree a special educa- 

 tion. Some will benefit by a wide cultural 

 training, others will not. A broad man 

 may benefit by a broad training; the nar- 

 row man must be content with a narrower 

 preparation to fit him for a narrower path 

 in life. A four years' course in Greek or 

 paleontology will not enable the apprentice 

 to wipe a joint nearly as well as would a 

 four weeks' laboratory course under a 

 master plumber. But a too broad train- 

 ing is, I believe, better than a too narrow 

 one. One so trained is more apt to make 

 a better citizen though he makes fewer dol- 

 lars. A more rational system, and one 

 towards which the educational world seems 

 rapidly tending, is to neglect neither the 

 general nor the special. The one funda- 

 mental principle in the teaching of science 

 at the present day is the laboratory, the 

 cultivation of skill in doing things rather 

 than in knowing about things. In all the 

 technical professions this is assumed, even 

 though it may be carried to an imdue ex- 

 tent. At least we are all agreed that the 

 one chief object of education is to make 

 the student think, and then do. How much 

 does the general college education do this 

 for many pursuits in life? 



Professor Thorndike, in a recent num- 

 ber of the Century Magazine, has given an 

 interesting analysis of the careers of the 

 Phi Beta Kappa scholars during the past 

 sixty years. He has shown that during 

 these years the proportion of those who 

 have followed the so-called learned profes- 



sions of law, the ministry, medicine and 

 teaching has remained nearly uniform at 

 aboiit sixty-five per cent., but that in some 

 of these vocations the proportions have in- 

 creased at the expense of those in others. 

 The percentage of those scholars following 

 the legal profession has advanced materi- 

 ally, while there has been a marked falling 

 off in the proportion of those who have 

 become clergymen. In the percentage of 

 teachers there has been a striking increase, 

 while that of physicians has increased from 

 five to about seven per cent. Membership 

 in this society in the past has been con- 

 ferred upon those students who have at- 

 tained a high stand in the so-called cul- 

 tural studies especially, professional stu- 

 dents being excluded even yet. What is 

 more reasonable to suppose than that such 

 students woiild of choice seek those pur- 

 suits for which their training has more 

 especially fitted them, and in Avhich they 

 have attained scholarly success? The de- 

 crease in the niunber of those seeking 

 the ministerial calling has been dependent 

 upon entirely different causes, though I 

 will venture to say that the percentage of 

 Phi Beta scholars following this profession 

 is larger than among other graduates with 

 similar training. While there are so many 

 more such scholars among our teachers 

 than formerly in the profession of medi- 

 cone, I doubt not there are proportionally 

 fewer than there were fifty years ago. 

 The increase of but two or three per cent, 

 for this profession is very suggestive, and 

 even this increase is more apparent than 

 real. In recent years the requirements 

 for the Bachelor of Arts degree have every- 

 M'here been much liberalized, and the Phi 

 Beta Kappa scholar is apt to be far more 

 varied in his training than he was for- 

 merly. In other words Mahomet has not 

 gone far toward the mountains, but the 

 mountains are coming to Mahomet. Pro- 

 fessor Thorudike deplores this lack of high- 



