July 15, 1904.] 



SCIENCE. 



73 



Ear.ely have they been the results of work 

 uudertaken with the object of attaining the 

 practical. Look at the beginnings of elec- 

 tricity. A piece of amber when rubbed 

 attracts bits of pith. A frog 's leg twitches 

 after death when touched in certain ways 

 with metals. That was all. Are such 

 things worth investigating 1 No doubt the 

 practical man said: 'No; stop trifling: do 

 something worth doing.' And if he had 

 been permitted to have his way, all the 

 wonderful results that depend upon the 

 applications of electricity would have been 

 impossible. In every line, much study, 

 much work, and much investigation are 

 absolutely necessary before enough knowl- 

 edge can be got together to make profitable, 

 practical applications possible. During 

 this early preparatory stage the work is of 

 no direct interest to the purely practical 

 man ; and yet without this work the appli- 

 cations which he values would be impossi 

 ble. Scientific work in its highest form 

 does not pay directly. Those who devote 

 themselves to the pursuit of pure science 

 do not, as a rule, reap pecuniary reward. 

 They probably enjoy their lives as much as 

 if they did, though it is often difficult to 

 make them believe this. But because it 

 does not yield immediate reward to the 

 worker, should the work stop? Surely 

 not. Our only hope of progress in intel- 

 lectual as well as practical matters lies in a 

 continuation of this work. And even 

 though not a single tangible, practical re- 

 sult should be reached, the work would be 

 valuable. Why? Because we are all 

 helped by knowledge. The more we know 

 of the universe the better fitted we are to fill 

 our places in the world. All will concede 

 the truth of that proposition. But if this 

 is true we have the strongest argument for 

 scientific work, for it is only through such 

 work that we are enlarging our knowledge. 

 There is no other way of learning. Some- 

 body must be adding to our stock of knowl- 



edge, or what we call progress in intellect- 

 ual and material things would stop. It also 

 seems probable that moral progress is aided 

 by intellectual progress, though it might be 

 difficult to make this perfectly clear. I 

 believe it is so ; though of course it does not 

 follow that every individual furnishes evi- 

 dence of the relation between intellectual 

 and moral progress. 



But, my friends, whether we will or not, 

 scientific investigation wiU go on as it has 

 been going on from the earliest times, and 

 it will go on more and more rapidly with 

 time. The universe is inexhaustible, and 

 its mysteries are inexplicable. We may 

 and must strive to learn all we can, but we 

 can not hope to learn all. We are finite; 

 the mysteries we are dealing with are 

 infinite. Ira Remsen. 



HIGHER EDUCATION IN GERMANY AND 

 THE UNITED STATES. 



An article on ' Thirty Years' Growth of 

 German Universities,' which recently ap- 

 peared in one of the educational magazines, 

 suggests an investigation along similar lines 

 with reference to our own country and a 

 comparison of existing conditions. There 

 can be no doubt of the fact that there is 

 manifested in this country an increasing 

 purpose to lead the intellectual or the sci- 

 entific life, which wiU inevitably tend to 

 raise the standard of American civilization 

 and culture. The growth of our leading 

 universities within the past decade bears 

 eloquent testimony to this fact, and we 

 have no reason to be dissatisfied with the 

 progress that has been made in the field 

 of higher education. A mere glance at the 

 figures in the above-mentioned article de- 

 scribing the growth of the higher institu- 

 tions of learning in Germany will convey a 

 good idea of the marvelous intellectual ad- 

 vancement of the nation since the Franco- 

 German war. The author shows that, while 

 there had been an increase of 38.9 per cent. 



