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1887 | | Biological Instruction in Universities. ee 2 | 
mand!” Is it possible that any one who realizes the destitution 
of this country in respect of men devoted to science, and who is 
aware of the fact that the number must be increased a hundred- 
fold before a position of fair respectability can be reached, can 
take alarm at the disposition sometimes shown by graduate 
students to engage in special lines of research? Whoever fears 
the tendency of modern science to specialization must have 
failed to catch the full significance of this tendency. Such coun- 
sellors have fallen into the same error against which they warn 
others. For, instead of looking at the subject broadly and in the 
light of history, they fix their eyes on some real or imaginary 
excesses. They find a few narrow-minded men engaged in very 
special lines of investigation—men who know their specialty 
well, but little else—and they infer that narrowness and special- 
ization necessarily go together. The term specialization has thus 
been degraded, and specialists find themselves heirs to an oppro- 
brium for which the only foundation is a vulgar misconception. 
Every specialist who stands on the approval of his own con- 
science is well able to bear his cross; but he cannot look with 
. indifference on the tendency to superficiality which such a mis- 
conception directly encourages. I have in mind more than one 
aspirant for scientific fame who, from sheer fear of being too 
special, has fallen a victim to the curse of superficiality. Certainly 
missionary work is not very far from our doors, and if I am the 
least qualified of all to undertake such work, I trust I shall not 
transgress the bounds of propriety in urging others to do it. 
en we remember that specialization has marked every step in 
the progress of science, and that every advance in the future 
must inevitably carry us still farther in the same direction, we can 
hardly wonder that those who, as spectators, see the grand army 
of workers splitting up into more and more numerous divisions, 
as the necessity for more special work arises, should regard the ` 
whole movement as one tending to weakness and narrowness. 
But those who march in the ranks can have no excuse for such 
a groundless fear. They at least ought to know that there’ is 
just as little reason for making specialization a synonyme for 
narrowness as for connecting generalization with shallowness. 
None can know better than they that specialization is the only 
proper basis for generalization, and that the two are indissolubly 
related as means to end. But there are hangers-on who wear 
