April V2, 1895.] 



SCIENCE. 



395 



instructor competent to fill a professor's 

 chair in physics is now expected to add 

 something to the stock of knowledge by his 

 independent investigations. It has thus 

 made graduate instruction possible in Am- 

 erican universities, a movement having tlie 

 most hoi)eful outlook and of the most pro- 

 found educational import. 



A third and most complete leavening in- 

 fluence is that the method by experiment 

 and original investigation adopted by sci- 

 ence has compelled other departments of 

 learning to become its imitators, so that 

 now the laboratory method prevails in 

 nearly everj- department of learning. This 

 result is too patent to be questioned even. 

 Psychologj-, language and history have 

 yielded to the powerful example set by 

 physics and chemistry. Archaeology has its 

 work-room, its laboi-atory ; language its 

 photographs, its projections, its casts and 

 reproduction of ancient life and times; while 

 psychology has appropriated not only the 

 methods, but the apparatus of the phj'sicist. 



Now a movement which has been such a 

 powerful operator in solving the problem of 

 education in everj- branch of learning has a 

 significant value in the intellectual training 

 of American youth. In fact, the value of 

 science in any sj'stem of liberal education is 

 so generally admitted that it is an almost 

 needless expenditure of energy to enter into 

 a discussion relative to its merits. It is no 

 new comer for whom room is benevolently 

 or patronizinglj- made in order that it may 

 displaj' its powers and demonstrate its worth. 

 It acknowledges other claimants as peers, 

 but admits no superiors. It came long ago 

 to staj-. 



I should like to point out two or three 

 aspects of the study and pursuit of science 

 not often alluded to or recognized, but on 

 which I lay much stress. The first relates 

 to the cultivation and chastening of the 

 faculty of imagination. Sir Benjamin Brodie 

 said in a presidential address to the Royal 



Society many years ago: " Physical investi- 

 gation, more than anything besides, helps 

 to teach us the actual value and right use 

 of the imagination — of that wondrous fac- 

 ulty which, left to ramble uncontrolled, 

 leads us astray into a wilderness of perplex- 

 ities and errors, a land of mists and shadows; 

 but which, properly controlled by experience 

 and reflection, becomes the noblest attribute 

 of man, the source of poetic genius, the in- 

 strument of discovery in science, without 

 the aid of which Xcwton would never have 

 invented fluxions, nor Davj' have decom- 

 posed the earths and alkalies, nor would 

 Columbus have found another continent." 

 It would be a grievous mistake to suppose 

 that the cultivation of science contributes 

 only to accuracy and exactness; to the de- 

 velopment of the liabit and power of obser- 

 vation, and to the education of the reason- 

 ing faculty as applied to the concrete — to 

 the objects and phenomena of nature. All 

 of these constitute a valuable training and 

 are demonstrable results of an honest effort 

 to understand and coordinate the phenom- 

 ena of nature. But as soon as the student 

 of science passes beyond the mere elements 

 he must train himself to the habit of con- 

 ceiving things wliich " eye hath not seen, 

 nor ear heard, nor have entered into the 

 heart of man." He must emancipate him- 

 self as much as possible from the domina- 

 tion of his sensations, and must learn that 

 sense-perceptions should not be projected 

 into the outer world of nature, but that they 

 are only symbols of objective phenomena 

 presented to consciousness, wliich the im- 

 agination, aided by reason and reflection, 

 must interpret. Not only is the imagina- 

 tion called into activity by the common oc- 

 currences of the natural world lying along 

 the level and the horizon of man's experi- 

 ence, but it is powerfully stimulated by the 

 more remote phenomena above him and be- 

 low him. Man contemplates the starrj" 

 firmament on high, the spangled heavens, 



