970 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVII. No. 442. 



and provided foi' even amongst the most 

 conservative of the older colleges. 



In some states the vs^ork of the state is 

 carried on by private contributions, in 

 large part, directed, nevertheless, toward 

 the education of the people for life. It is, 

 however, well understood that the work is 

 essential to the progress of the country, and 

 that, on the whole, it is not safe or wise to 

 leave it to the sporadic and fitful care of 

 private benevolence; the duties of the 

 state should never be entrusted to enter- 

 prises which are of necessity usually men- 

 dicant and unequal to their work as are 

 the colleges generally. The latter are al- 

 ways poor and always more or less jiueffi- 

 cient from that cause and they are always 

 necessarily mendicant, receiving their ac- 

 cessions of income irregularly and com- 

 monly least freely when most in need. 

 This work must ultimately be mainly car- 

 ried on by the state to insure thorough 

 efficiency and most rapid advancement of 

 the industries and of the people. There 

 will always be ample opportunity for pri- 

 vate means to flow into this form of invest- 

 ment for special purposes; but the state 

 must make it certain that the forward 

 movement of civilization and the advance- 

 ment of the nation is not permitted to 

 halt because of any lack of provision for 

 education of the coming captains of in- 

 dustry or any defect in efficiency of the 

 means thereto. Every man of genius, 

 whatever his circumstances, will be assured 

 of tl^^ privilege of gaining that essential 

 training and learning which only can make 

 his genius of value to the world. It is the 

 state which must provide these 'freaks of 

 nature, ' as Huxley called them, these Watts 

 and Faradays and Davys, each genius, ac- 

 cording to the great man of science, 'cheap 

 at an hundred thousand pounds.' That 

 nation will go furthest and fare best which 

 produces and utilizes most fully the largest 



number of these 'freaks of nature.' Our 

 country has, perhaps, produced most freely 

 and utilized most fully; but the time has 

 come when even the man of genius, whether 

 in science or in industry, must, to make 

 his talent effective, know what the world 

 has acquired of learning, and must be 

 trained usefully and effectively to apply 

 that learning by means of the most perfect 

 of all known apparatus and methods. 

 That nation which fails thus to utilize its 

 men of ability will inevitably fall behind, 

 and its people taste of the bitter bread of 

 poverty. 



That state which most and best avails 

 itself of the opportunity to establish in- 

 stitutions of higher learning for the pro- 

 motion, particularly, of the industries, 

 through education for their leading posi- 

 tions of those men of ability, who will 

 invariably seek their opportunities, will 

 find its investment a handsomely paying 

 one. One such man recently saved to the 

 state of New York a million dollars by a 

 single scientific investigation, and every 

 young man leaving the engineering school 

 has his value doubled at the start, and often 

 multiplied many times later, by the train- 

 ing thus provided by the state. The in- 

 vestment is one which pays the state better 

 than any possible purely commercial one 

 can, and the future is far more advantaged 

 than the present and the public at large 

 is profited many- fold by the ability, natural 

 genius trained by scientific method, which 

 is thus gained for its industrial system. 



It is not sufficient, however, that the 

 education offered shall be the best possible 

 of its kind; it is essential for its full util- 

 ization, that it shall be given by those who 

 are experts, each in his own branch, and, 

 still further, that each of these experts 

 shall be in constant and intimate touch 

 with all the contemp6rary, and especially 

 the local, industries of the state. Highest 



