422 S CIENTIFIC ED UCA TION. 



which they can govern themselves without the intervention of kings. It 

 has extended to woman control over her own property, and abolished 

 slavery. The scientific spirit has taught people that disease is not a Provi- 

 dence, but neglect of the laws of health, only to be contended against by a 

 due observance thereof; that epidemics are preventible, and that rain will 

 not fall without the necessary atmospheric conditions for its precipitation. 

 Take all these reflex results of the new system of education, couple them 

 with the direct physical pursuits of science, the improvement in the modes 

 of living, of water supply, of drainage, the railway, the steamship and tel- 

 egraph ; and compare the result in the effect upon the one problem of life, 

 "Human Happiness," with the best that can be said of the old regime of 

 scholastic education. It is the comparison between the electric light and 

 a candle. 



What future developments science has in store for us, it would be rash 

 to forecast with any attempt at details. We know that a vast amount re- 

 mains to be done, ?o long as an ideal condition of society beckons us on. 

 There is still an incalculable amount of want, and misery, and suffering, in 

 the world; whole communities in ignorance, and many unadjusted questions 

 between labor and capital. What is known as social science is just begin- 

 ning to take form, and a host of problems growing out of it are to be 

 worked out. The great work of the new educational system in the future 

 will bo the training of men to grapple scientifically with these social prob- 

 lems in all their complex relations, political and physical, and to sow broad- 

 cast among the people the idea of causation. That things proceed not by 

 chance, but by law, that out of nothing, nothing comes, that there can be 

 no effect without a cause, and that the operations of nature arc conducted 

 according to a system instituted when matter was formed and force origi- 

 nated. In physical matters, it is hardly probable that the world will ever 

 see again such startling discoveries as those which have fallen to the lot of 

 this century. The spirit of the " new education " will extend its benefits, 

 and in the end carry them to people yet to be civilized. It will send out 

 more workers in physical fields than ever before, but their work will con- 

 sist in the development of details, and in the careful scrutiny of the by- 

 paths that the past revolutionary discoveries, so to speak, have opened up. 

 Of such work there will be an endless amount, indications of which are 

 seen in the number of investigators in special lines of research, which from 

 past experience we may expect will be sub-divided from time to time into 

 still other special fields of study, as material accumulates. Civilized na- 

 tions have insensibly adopted a sj^stem of divided labor, as a matter of 

 economy partlj-, but principally because it has been forced upon them by 

 the limitation of human powers. The system is not without its disadvant- 

 ages, however, in that the specialist, devoted to one class of ideas, is apt to 

 lose sight of the relativity, of all knowledge, and to elevate into a fictitious 

 importance the study he may have in hand. Like the aged German pro- 

 fessor who had but one regret on his death-bed, and that was that he had 



