AuGVST 7, 1903.] 



SCIENCE. 



163 



recently, however, in the historical sense, 

 there has arisen a new foi'ui of learning, 

 under the name of science, which has now 

 come to be generally recognized as worthy, 

 at least, of a good share of our attention, if 

 it is not comparable in value with the an- 

 cient learning ; while some of the bolder ad- 

 vocates of science would give it first place in 

 any scheme of education. This new learning, 

 in the comprehensive sense now implied by 

 the word science, is only about thirty years 

 old. But to understand fully its meaning 

 and to appreciate how profoundly it has 

 affected educational matters, one needs to 

 have lived in the preseientifie as well as in 

 the present epoch. Suffice it to say here 

 that the advent of science in education was 

 not accomplished without a struggle, which 

 rose at times to a fierceness not altogether 

 creditable to the combatants involved. But 

 though the storm and stress of that strug- 

 gle, happily, have died away, there remain 

 some controverted questions whose adjust- 

 ment must be left, perhaps, to you of the 

 present generation to bring about; for we 

 of the preseientifie epoch can not discuss 

 them without arousing prejudice which is 

 attributed either to ii-ratioual conservatism, 

 on the one hand, or to sweeping iconoclasm, 

 on the other. 



I may allude, in passing, to certain forms 

 of this prejudice, and suggest that our 

 sense of humor should help much to dissi- 

 pate the intellectual fogs which obscure 

 these matters of controversy, and hence 

 lead to solutions which will rest on founda- 

 tions of merit alone. Thus, even at the 

 present day, many of the older school of 

 education hold, tacitly, if not openly, that 

 studies may be divided into sharply de- 

 fined categories designated as 'liberal,' 

 'humanistic,' 'scientific,' 'professional,' 

 'technical,' etc.; and men and women are 

 said to have had 'a liberal training,' 'a 

 professional training' or 'a technical train- 



ing,' as the case may be. They say, by im- 

 plication at least, that mathematics, when 

 pursued a little way, just far enough to 

 make a student entertain the egot;,-*.ic but 

 erroneous notion that he knows something 

 of the subject, is an element of liberal 

 training. On the other hand, if the stu- 

 dent goes further, and acquires a working 

 knowledge of mathematics, his training is 

 called professional or technical. Similarly, 

 studies which include the memorabilia of 

 Xenophon and Ctesar, the poetry of Homer 

 and Virgil and Dante and Shakespeare, 

 or, in short, the so-called polite literature 

 of ancient and modern times, ai-e said to 

 lead to breadth and culture; while studies 

 which include the works of Archimedes, 

 Tlipparchus, Galileo, Huygens, Newton, 

 Laplace and Darwin are said to lead to 

 narrowness and specialism ; as if the first 

 class of authors were somehow possessed of 

 humanistic traits, and the other class of 

 demoniacal tendencies. So far, indeed, are 

 these distinctions carried that higher moral 

 qualities are not uncommonly attributed to 

 the young man who studies Latin and 

 Greek in order that he may earn a living 

 by teaching them than are attributed to the 

 young man who studies engineering in or- 

 der that he may earn a living by building 

 bridges which will not fall down and kill 

 folks. 



But, you may ask, is it not possible, in 

 spite of tradition, prejudice and conflict of 

 opinion, to lay down some practical pre- 

 cept or working hj'pothesis that will en- 

 able us to proceed along dift'erent routes 

 toward the conunon goal with reasonable 

 hopes of success? Experience during the 

 past thirty years has given, I think, an 

 affirmative answer to this question. We 

 need only to enlarge our definition of edu- 

 cation in order to include all that is good 

 in the new learning and to retain all that 

 is good in the old learning. The only im- 



