September 27, 1901.] 



SCIENCE. 



479 



one may go through Harvard and take his 

 degree without giving one moment to either 

 Greek or Latin, while in Cambridge. The 

 same thing is true at many universities. 

 Are we, therefore, less liberal than formerly ? 

 Can we not answer that we are more liberal ? 

 People now read Demosthenes and Quintil- 

 ian and Horace, analytic geometry, phys- 

 ics, thermodynamics and the like, because 

 they wish to be familiar with those authors 

 or to master those subjects, not because they 

 are compelled to by a traditional canon. 

 Does any one suppose that there is not a 

 decided gain in the quality of the result ? 



Through the technical schools, some of 

 the most valuable educational studies have 

 been developed. How few people realize 

 the surpassing mental discipline that comes 

 from the study of descriptive geometry, 

 laboratory physics and the mechanic arts. 

 I knew nothing of the study of descriptive 

 geometry till years after I left college, and 

 yet no subject I had in college could com- 

 pare with it as a mental stimulus and a 

 cultivator of the scientific imagination. It 

 ought to have place in every liberal course 

 of study. Modern courses of study contain, 

 of necessity, extensive allowances of labora- 

 tory work of one sort and another. Our 

 idea of all such work is that the method 

 shall be unfailingly rational ; that facts, 

 though essential, shall be rated as far less 

 important than the principles which under- 

 lie them. Where this idea is realized, the 

 study becomes truly liberal. 



In spite of the old claim of preeminent 

 liberality, the old college curriculum, when 

 examined historically, is found to have been 

 adopted for reasons of utility. People 

 learned Latin because they wanted to use 

 Latin. All books and state papers were 

 written in Latin, and one needed to both 

 read it and write it, as we must English 

 prose. The physician must read Galen in 

 the original ; the clergyman needed the 

 Greek Testament; the lawyers must read 



the Institutes of Justinian, and the man of 

 leisure and the orator must be able to quote 

 Aristotle and Homer, Virgil and Horace. 

 The first American colleges were organized 

 for the training of clergymen. Every fea- 

 ture of the course was directly useful to the 

 end in view. 



It is easy to see the source of a wide- 

 spread prej udice against technical training. 

 The history of civilization has been the his- 

 tory of masters and slaves, of castes, of 

 contempt for labor and for all useful arts. 

 Every one of the technical professions had 

 its beginning in the crafts and the present 

 technical expert and engineer had as a pro- 

 totype a man in overalls, with horny hands 

 and a soiled face, who presided over some 

 enginery which was not authorized by the 

 ancients and which at best was generally re- 

 garded as ungenteel. Milton placed Mem- 

 non, the first ante-tellurian engineer, among 

 the fallen angels, and sent him 



' With his industrious crew to build in hell.' 



The engineer is by nature an iconoclast. 

 He has small respect for the traditions. 

 He bows not down to the ' tyranny of the 

 ancients.' His glories are in the future. 

 He looks forward, not back. He does not 

 hesitate to smile at the puerile fancies of 

 people who created gods and demi-gods in 

 order to account for phenomena which to- 

 day submit to mathematical analysis and 

 which bear no comparison with the exploits 

 of modern engineering. The accomplished 

 engineer generally reciprocates the prejudice 

 I have mentioned, for he cannot under- 

 stand how the worship of the ancients can 

 be really serious ; it seems to him three- 

 fourths affectation. This mutual prejudice 

 was fostered by the high wall of separation 

 which at first kept the technical and the 

 liberal branches of study far apart. That 

 wall, I am happy to say, is fast tumbling 

 down, and men are rapidly scrambling over 

 it in both directions. It becomes us, from 

 our various vantage grounds of influence, 



