June 19, 1903.] 



SCIENCE. 



967 



preceding, and this process is continued 

 until a curriculum is constructed which, 

 leading up out of the common schools, 

 terminates at its superior limit at that 

 point at which the diploma of the technical 

 school or college becomes a sufficient guar- 

 antee of satisfactory preparation to enter 

 the business and to perfect the professional 

 education by the regular practice of the 

 vocation chosen. 



The final form and extent of this cur- 

 riculum must necessarily be determined by 

 experience, and the preliminary outline 

 must be accepted as provisional. The cur- 

 riculum will be subject to constant change, 

 amplification and improvement in detail, 

 as time and the forward progress of the 

 profession or the business permits or com- 

 pels, and thus the adjustment of the work 

 to the requirements becomes more and more 

 perfect. Ultimately, the practitioner will 

 find that the institution is doing all that 

 can be fairly asked of it, and the novice 

 entering into business will find himself as 

 well outfitted as is possible in the time and 

 at the expense permissible, and the youth 

 proposing to take up the line of work in 

 view will find his progress out of the com- 

 mon school, into the business school or 

 college, and out of the latter into business, 

 a smooth and continuous and clearly de- 

 fined movement. Once in business, thus 

 prepared, his success will depend upon his 

 own talent, industry, tact and judgment. 



This development of our system of gen- 

 eral education is the great work of our 

 day and generation. The wisdom of our 

 statesmen as well as of our educators is 

 to be tested, and is being measured by the 

 promptness and effectiveness with which 

 they adapt their own ideas, and fit the edu- 

 cational system, to the requirements of a 

 modern industrial organization. When 

 they stolidly follow the ways of the an- 

 cients, modern life fiows past them. Mod- 



ern educations illustrate the wisdom, the 

 learning, the knowledge and the culture 

 of later centuries. The wonderful gains 

 of the nineteenth century, particularly, are 

 being supplemented by those who have the 

 wisdom of great statesmen, the learning 

 of modern times, the knowledge which sci- 

 ence supplies and the culture which comes 

 of a symmetrical education in all the arts, 

 the sciences, the literatures and the phi- 

 losophies of our own time, so far as it has 

 been permitted to incorporate them into 

 school and college curriculums. The ex- 

 traordinary work of the German empire 

 had its origin, in fact, with statesmen who, 

 without being themselves familiar with the 

 scientific curriculum, were wise enough 

 to understand its fundamental importance 

 and to know its place in the modern edu- 

 cations and the social system. 



The nineteenth century has been called 

 the wonderful century; but the world has, 

 since the commencement of the seventeenth 

 century, at least, been progressing with 

 swift acceleration, and each century has 

 been wonderful and each more wonderful 

 than the last, to the contemporary looker- 

 on. The twentieth century is probably to 

 be more wonderful than the nineteenth, 

 not perhaps in the fact of its seeing the 

 inauguration of a new era in science and 

 the arts, that is a wonder, unique and 

 probably without precedent or later rival; 

 but it will no doubt bring its share of new 

 wonders and of new achievement, opening 

 new realms of nature, utilizing new forces 

 and energies, and availing itself of the old 

 in new and unanticipated and marvelous 

 ways. New elements and new compounds 

 are to be discovered having more remark- 

 able and more useful properties than the 

 old; new methods of manifestation of that 

 protean power which we call energy will 

 be observed and utilized in forwarding the 

 tasks of the engineer and strange and mys- 



