REQUIREMENTS OF SCIENTIFIC EDUCATION. 209 



of the preparation of every young man for his life's career. His suc- 

 cess, aside from his moral qualities, will be in direct proportion to his 

 influence over other men ; and this influence, again, will be in part 

 proportional to his command of the means by which the minds of men 

 are moved, mainly, language. Under this term we may include a 

 knowledge of the methods of practical reasoning, and if this knowledge 

 is best obtained by scholastic study of logic, then logic must be studied. 

 If Latin and Greek are necessary, then they must be studied. For 

 us, one thing is necessary — a thorough mastery of the English tongue — 

 and this alone has been made to yield, in Lafayette College, a mental 

 discipline not inferior to that of the classics. 



But influence is not due to language alone. Behind this vehicle 

 of thought there must be fullness and variety of thought itself. Those 

 fruitful analogies, felicitous illustrations, graceful associations, which 

 come, and come alone, through wide acquaintance with human life and 

 literature, are so many elements of power, and, without this broad 

 basis of a common ground from which to move the minds of others, 

 the student of a special science, though possessed of the lever of Ar- 

 chimedes that would move the world, has no place whereon to stand. 



In accordance with these principles, the object of the system of 

 college education in America has always been development and disci- 

 pline of character, and the broad preparation of the student for his 

 subsequent special or professional pursuits. Our colleges may not 

 have succeeded in realizing this ideal, nevertheless this has been their 

 ideal ; and it is the right one, as much to-day as ever. Whatever 

 changes are required in our institutions of learning, to adapt them to 

 the necessities of the modern era, must be changes in accordance with 

 this principle — changes of means, not of ends, so far as colleges are 

 concerned. 



That changes are required is admitted on all hands. It is admitted 

 that the physical sciences should be introduced to primary and pre- 

 paratory schools ; that they should be taught for the double purpose 

 of mental discipline and of mental acquirement in the class-rooms of 

 our colleges ; that in teaching them the scientific, inductive, experi- 

 mental, instead of the dogmatic, method should be pursued; and, 

 finally, that either connected with our colleges, or standing outside of 

 them, schools of thorough scientific and technical special training are 

 imperatively required. It is to inaugurate the wider activity of such 

 a school that we are met hereto-day, and I shall say a few words con- 

 cerning the relation of this school to Lafayette College, on the one 

 hand, and to technical education and the needs of the present time in 

 technical departments on the other hand. 



While we trust that in time to come scientific investigation will be 

 promoted in no mean degree by this school and its graduates, it must 

 be confessed that at the present time its object is chiefly the prepara- 

 tion of young men for practical pursuits involving the applications of 

 TOL. it. — 14 



