172 



SCIENCE, 



[Vol.. VI., No. 104. 



on which I wish to insist is tliis: these few must also 

 get it for themselves, and, moreover, must work hard 

 for it. 



Il is a hackneyed aphorism, that there is no royal 

 road to knowledge, although an incredible amoiiiit of 

 pains has been taken to make one. Nature, in this 

 affair as usual, has been a good, wise mother to us 

 all; for it is not desirable to make the acquisition of 

 knowledge easy; for the main point in scientific edu- 

 cation is to secure the highest activity of the human 

 mind in the pursuit of truth ; an activity tried and 

 disciplined by hardship, and nourished on hardy fare. 

 The quantity of food is of less importance; every 

 thing depends on establishing a good constitutional 

 digestion. The harder the dinner is to chew, the 

 stronger grows the eater. Canned science, as a steady 

 diet, is as unwholesome for the growing mind as 

 canned fruits and vegetables for the groM'ing body. 

 The wise teacher imitates tlie method of nature, who 

 has but one answer for all questions: "Find it out 

 for yourself, and you will then know it better than if 

 I were to tell you beforehand." 



But who can be a wise teacher who has not been 

 wisely taught ? The spirit of this scientitic age favors 

 a universal manufacture of condensed milk to ease 

 and cheapen the toil of bringing up its infants. It 

 linds the bottle of literature more convenient than 

 tiie breast of nature. It prefers a large family of 

 puny children to a few young heroes. The stalwart 

 ancients exposed their unfit offspring to the wolves; 

 we moderns exhaust the resources of art to preserve 

 their worthless and painful lives. 



This is the spirit which invents a thousand futile 

 plans for compacting the universe to a size so small, 

 and a shape so simple, that it can be grasped without 

 much effort by the tiniest and feeblest hands. Will 

 it be an unpardonable crime for me to say that I rec- 

 ognize the same spirit in the present popular rage for 

 an over-classification, unification, and simplification 

 of science; for ultra-synnuetrical formulae, and ex- 

 cessive uniformity in nomenclature; with an avowed 

 reference to ease of learning and convenience of 

 teaching, the saving of time in the acquisition of 

 facts, and the diminution of brain-waste in collating 

 them for use; in one word, to the making of science 

 easy, in despite of the inexorable decree of nature, 

 that it always shall be and always ought to be diffi- 

 cult ? For the genius of the creation is visibly hostile 

 to that uniformity, symmetry, and orderly simplicity 

 which the text-book endeavors to establish. No 

 logical consistency for her! No stiffening of the fact- 

 producing energies into fact formularies will she en- 

 dure. Hardly has a manual issued from the press 

 but it is mutilated by her puckish fingers. No sooner 

 has some school of theorists erected a stately struc- 

 ture in simple grandeur, than it is shattered by the 

 lightning of a new revelation. Tliere is no rest, no 

 peace, in our believhig. Our libraries contain little 

 else than such spoiled palimpsests; the broad fields 

 of science are covered with such ruins; and those 

 who have grown old in travelling far and wide across 

 i\wn\ would find little cause for singing paeans to the 

 exploits of science were it not for the fact that the 



function of science is not to organize nature, but by 

 the laborious study of nature to organize the human 

 mind, and inform it with the very genius of nature, 

 original, unsymmetrical, indefinable, unclassifiable, 

 changing its attitudes and operations every instant, 

 and escaping easily from all the toils of scholastic 

 unification which we spread for it. The work of the 

 student cannot be simplified, cannot be made easy, 

 if it is not to fail in its great purpose, the production 

 of a genuine man of science. The foolish nurse 

 thinks it her duty to carry the child always in her 

 arms ; but the test of a good education is the ability 

 of the child to carry its nurse; and this it can only 

 attain to through the discipline of toil; toil which at 

 first conceals itself under the gracious guise of sports, 

 gymnastics, and adventures, and afterwards takes 

 the shape of experimental failures and useless con- 

 structions, but all as free, untutored, and original 

 as the laughing, wasteful, and ungovernable pranks 

 of nature. Jiut I have followed long enough, perhaps 

 you will think too long, this train of thought: let me 

 suggest another. 



It is a familiar fact, that great discoveries come at 

 long intervals, brought by specially commissioned 

 and highly endowed messengers; while a perpetual 

 procession of humbler servants of nature arrive with 

 gifts of lesser moment, but equally genuine, curious, 

 and interesting novelties. The excitement of the 

 pageant incapacitates us for reasoning rightly on its 

 meaning. From what unknown land does all this 

 wealth of information come? Who are these bearers 

 of it? and who intrusted each with his particular 

 burden, which he carries aloft as if it deserved ex- 

 clusive admiration? Why do those who bring the 

 best things walk so seriously and modestly along, as 

 if they were in the performance of a sacred duty 

 for which they scarcely esteem themselves worthy; 

 while those who have little to show, or things of in- 

 ferior or doubtful value, strut and grimace magnifi- 

 cently, as if they felt themselves the especial favorites 

 of nature, push to the front, speak loudly to the 

 multitude, and evidently deem themselves entitled 

 to uncommon honors? 



In this procession of science, in this interminable 

 show of discovery, two facts arrest attention : first, 

 the eagei- gaze of expectation which the crowd of 

 lookers-on direct towards the quarter from which the 

 procession comes, and their unaccountable indiffer- 

 ence to what has already passed; and secondly, the 

 wonderful disappearance, the more or less sudden 

 vanishing out of the very hands of the carriers, of a 

 large majority of the facts and theories of which they 

 make so pompous an exposure; few of them, how- 

 ever, seeming to be aware that thereby they have 

 lost their right to participate in the pageant, and 

 should retire from it into the throng of spectators, at 

 least until good fortune should take pity on them, 

 and drop some new trifle at their feet to soothe their 

 wounded vanity. 



You will not suspect me of depreciating the value 

 of any real discovery, be it merely the finding of a 

 Californian bird on the shore of Massachusetts Bay, 

 or detecting, with the naked eye, the blazing of a 



