September 27, 1901.] 



SCIENCE. 



411 



and as we share in it ? What problems can 

 be more human than those which face nine 

 out of ten of the people who reach the age 

 of individual responsibility ? 



More and more we are considering the 

 many and not the few, when we draw up 

 our schemes of study and training. As 

 wealth increases, as the hours of labor be- 

 come shorter, as luxuries multiply, and a 

 taste for literature and art and science be- 

 comes general, the number of students enter- 

 ing upon some form of higher education 

 greatly increases. The number of such 

 students to-day per million of people has 

 doubled several times in fifty years. 



It is, therefore, not surprising that there 

 should arise, in the minds of many less fa- 

 miliar with the content and the method of 

 a modern technical university, a fear that 

 the standards of character as well as the 

 standards of scholarship should suffer, and, 

 in being less ' select,' that the content 

 of education should be at the same time 

 less fine. Whether this fear be well 

 grounded or not, we must all sympathize 

 with its spirit. We can have no quarrel 

 with those who wish the first fruit of edu- 

 cation to be character. I cannot forbear 

 quoting a few sentences from the late presi- 

 dent of the Massachusetts Institute of 

 Technology, Gen. Francis A. Walker, upon 

 the tendencies of modern technical educa- 

 tion, in reply to certain strictures as to its 

 dignity and unselfishness. In his remarks 

 at the dedication of new science and engi- 

 neering buildings at McGill University, 

 Montreal, General Walker said : 



" The notion that scientific work was 

 something essentially less fine and high 

 and noble than the pursuit of rhetoric and 

 philosophy, Latin and Greek, was deeply 

 seated in the minds of the leading educa- 

 tors of America a generation ago. And it 

 has not even yet wholly yielded to the dem- 

 onstration offered by the admirable effects 

 of the new education in training up young 



men to be as modest and earnest, as sincere, 

 manly and pure, as broad and appreciative, 

 as were the best products of the classical cul- 

 ture, and, withal, more exact and resolute 

 and strong. We can hardly hope to see 

 that inveterate prepossession altogether 

 disappear from the minds of those who 

 have entertained it. Probably these good 

 men will have to be buried with more or 

 less of their prejudices still wrapped about 

 them, but from the new generation scien- 

 tific and technical studies will encounter 

 no such obstruction, will suffer no such 

 disparagement. 



" Another objection which the new edu- 

 cation has encountered is entitled to far 

 more of consideration. This has arisen 

 from the sincere conviction of many distin- 

 guished and earnest educators that the pur- 

 suit of science, especially where its tech- 

 nical applications are brought strongly out, 

 loses much of that disinterestedness which 

 they claim, and rightly claim, is of the very 

 essence of education. I differ from these 

 honorable gentlemen. I believe that the 

 contemplated uses of science, whether in 

 advancing the condition of mankind, or 

 even in promoting the ulterior usefulness, 

 success and pecuniary profit of the student 

 of a technical profession, do not necessarily 

 impair that disinterestedness. These gen- 

 tlemen appear to me to have an altogether 

 unnecessary fear of the usefulness of sci- 

 ence. 



" The strong desire to become a useful 

 man, well equipped for life, capable of 

 doing good work, respected and entitled to 

 respect, constitutes no breach of disinter- 

 estedness in any sense of that word." 

 Finally he says : 



" I boldly challenge comparison between 

 the scientific men of America, as a body, 

 and its literary men or even its artists, in 

 the respect of its devotion to truth, of 

 simple confidence in the right, of delight in 

 good work for good work's sake, of indis- 



