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tion and opportunity, but that he was obliged to confess to some 

 disappointment at the results. He was not referring to the sciences 

 in technical education, for in this field their status is satisfactory, 

 but to their position in general or cultural education. He did 

 not presume, he said, to suggest either an explanation or a 

 remedy, but he submitted the matter to the consideration of his 

 expert audience. These words of this eminent educational ob- 

 server touched an answering chord in my own thoughts, and 

 since that time I have found, by inquiry among my colleagues, 

 that he voiced a feeling quite general among scientific men them- 

 selves. It seems, therefore, to be a fact that the sciences, although 

 dealing in knowledge of matters of the greatest immediate inter- 

 est, and although concerned with the most elemental of all train- 

 ings — that in the correlated use of hand, eye and mind — are 

 still of mediocre efficiency as factors in general education. I 

 propose now to discuss briefly the reasons I have been able to 

 find for this undesirable condition of a part of our scientific affairs, 

 and to suggest with particular reference to our own beloved 

 science, some remedy therefor. 



It will help to clarify our problem if we can come to an un- 

 derstanding upon certain points in the general relations of the 

 sciences to education, the first being this — what place ought 

 the sciences to have in education ? I think we shall agree that 

 the sciences can never, under any circumstances, hold a place in 

 education nearly as prominent as that of the humanities. Man is 

 not primarily a reasoning but a feeling being. As a philosopher 

 has expressed it, " few men think at all and they but seldom." 

 Hence the great majority of people in most part, and all people 

 in some degree, can best be reached and influenced by studies 

 which appeal primarily to the feelings, that is, by the humanities, 

 while it is only a minority which can best be reached by studies 

 appealing chiefly to the reason — that is, by the sciences and 

 mathematics. But a minority has rights, and those to whom the 

 sciences especially appeal, and to whom therefore they are of the 

 higher cultural value, are just as entitled to efficient instruction 

 in their subjects as are the majority in theirs. The sciences must 

 always hold, from their nature in conjunction with that of hu- 



