260 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 
To present our problem definitely at the outset, I submit the fol- 
lowing proposition: The intellectual culture derived through standard- 
ized branches of education, as mathematics and Latin, for example, 
instead of having a general mental economy for the innumerable young 
men and women who study them, in reality becomes parasitic in the 
nervous and mental life, and thus is a cause of wasted energy and, pos- 
sibly, of disease. This proposition has its proper qualification, of course, 
in all cases where such intellectual culture is so related to the functions 
of life that it can be utilized. There are two questions that confront 
us in such a proposition: (1) Is culture, unused for the specific func- 
tion that called it into being, of no economy in performing other func- 
tions? And (2) is such culture, therefore, parasitic and wasteful of 
human energy? As has already been pointed out in connection with 
physical culture, it has long been assumed, and is still generally as- 
sumed, that culture acquired through any given discipline becomes a 
general fund of energy or skill, transferable to other organs and func- 
tions. And yet there has never been any really critical evidence in 
support of such an assumption. The belief in a hierarchy of culture- 
values, which has standardized the various branches of our academic 
curricula, like many other beliefs relating to the world of mind and 
the world of matter, belongs to the category of the naive, the uncritical 
and the prejudiced. In most of the learned decisions upon the con- 
stitution of this hierarchy, the judge, the advocates, and the jury have 
merely reflected the nature of their own training, and more especially 
the interests of their own calling. But we are now in a position to 
submit this question to the test of exact experiments. This has been 
done repeatedly within the last few years by experimental psychologists. 
Among such psychologists may be mentioned James, Gilbert, Fracker, 
Thorndike, Woodworth, Judd, Bair, Volkmann and Scripture. The 
net result of these men’s studies may be stated in the words of Professor 
Thorndike, of Columbia University: 
A change in one function alters any other only in so far as the two fune- 
tions have as factors identical elements. The change in the second function is 
in amount that due to the change in the elements common to it and the first. 
_. . Improvement in any single mental function need not improve the ability 
in functions commonly called by the same name. It may injure it. Improve- 
ment in any single mental function rarely brings about equal improvement in 
no matter how similar, for the working of every mental 
any other function, 
ditioned by the nature of the data in each particular casé.* 
function-group is con 
This is direct experimental evidence, and it is fairly conclusive 
against at least much of the indiscriminate championship of the general 
culture values of special subjects, like mathematics and the classical 
languages. Neurology, moreover, supplies additional indirect evidence 
no less conclusive to those familiar with the histology of the brain. 
1“ Bducational Psychology,” Chapter VIII. 
