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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XX. No. 499. 



^taught men to perform justly, skilfully 

 and magnanimously all the offices, both 

 public and private, of peace and war'; or 

 that of ancient Greece and Rome which de- 

 veloped an almost perfect language and 

 literature and produced an art and phi- 

 losophy which have been the admiration of 

 the ages; or that of the mediffival univer- 

 sities which revived a part of the old 

 learning but added nothing new, or that 

 of the centuries succeeding the renaissance 

 which laid chief stress upon classic culture 

 but developed a vernacular literature and 

 gave birth to the sciences; or that of the 

 present with its tendency to absolute free- 

 dom in the choice of studies ? Among this 

 diversity of methods and results it is diffi- 

 cult to select a criterion by which to settle 

 our question. Many definitions of an edu- 

 cated man have been given, but among them 

 all I know of none that will appeal to a 

 scientific mind like that of Huxley. He 

 says : ' ' That man, I think, has a liberal edu- 

 cation, whose body has been so trained in 

 youth that it is the ready servant of his 

 will, and does with ease and pleasure all 

 that, as a mechanism, it is capable of; 

 whose intellect is a clear, cold, logic engine, 

 with all its parts of equal strength and in 

 smooth running order, ready, like a steam 

 engine, to be turned to any kind of work 

 and to spin the gossamers as well as forge 

 the anchors of the mind; whose mind is 

 stored with the knowledge of the great 

 fundamental truths of nature and the laws 

 of her operations; one who, no stunted 

 ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose 

 passions have been trained to come to heel 

 by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender 

 conscience ; one who has learned to love all 

 beauty, whether of nature or of art, to hate 

 all vileness, and to esteem others as him- 

 self." 



Without attempting to rival this and 

 other definitions, I may say that consider- 

 ing the subject from an intellectual staud- 



point only, if we are to train educated men 

 I believe we must teach our students to 

 Imow, to search, to think. To know — what? 

 This is the question which our institutions 

 of learning have been trying for many cen- 

 turies to solve. When all knowledge was 

 embraced in the Trivium, the problem was 

 easy. He who mastered the Trivium was 

 educated. Now the very extent of knowl- 

 edge makes the problem difficult. The 

 chemist, the mathematician, the botanist, 

 the philologist, each declares that unless a 

 man knows something of his specialty he is 

 not broadly educated. Enough is known 

 in mathematics to keep a student busy for 

 his entire life, and the same is true of all 

 other branches of learning. The poor 

 student is urged on by one teacher and 

 conditioned by another, is given lessons by 

 each long enough to consume all of his 

 study hours, and wonders why he is obliged 

 to try to master things he does not like ; or 

 turned loose to browse as he pleases, seeks 

 too often the easiest paths and gains but 

 one side of an education. No man can 

 know all there is to know. However great 

 his attainments, however broad his sym- 

 pathies, however brilliant his intellect, he 

 can only prospect a little on the mountain 

 of knowledge. Is it necessary to know all ? 

 Are there not some things a knowledge 

 of which is necessary in education, and 

 others which can be left to the indi- 

 vidual taste? I believe that in the future 

 all colleges will answer this question, as 

 some have already done, in the affirm- 

 ative. Those which still adhere to the 

 required curriculum must permit a cer- 

 tain amount of natural selection, while 

 those which offer almost absolute freedom 

 in choice of studies must place more restric- 

 tions upon youthful tastes. And what are 

 these necessary subjects which all should 

 master? First and foremost is one's own 

 language. The ability to speak and write 

 the mother tongue should be insisted upon 



