Again, it has been said that while the opportunities for scientific culture in college are ample, no one will oppose such a modification of the requisitions for admission as the conditions of this culture demand, provided only we label the product of such culture with a descriptive name. Call the product of your scientific culture Bachelors of Science, we have been told, and you may arrange the requisites of admission to your own courses as you choose. I am forced to say that this argument, however specious, is neither ingenuous nor charitable. If you will label the product of a purely linguistic culture with an equally descriptive name; if, following the French usage, you will call such graduates Bachelors of Letters, we shall not object to the term Bachelors of Science; or, without making so great an innovation, I, for one, should have no objection to a distinction between Bachelors of Arts in Letters and Bachelors of Arts in Science. But it is perfectly well understood that in this community the degree of Bachelor of Arts is for most men the one essential condition of admission to the noble fraternity of scholars, to what has been called the "Guild of the Learned." To refuse this degree to a certain class of our graduates is to exclude them from such associations and from the privileges which they afford; and this is just what is intended. Hence I say that the argument is not ingenuous, and it is not charitable because it implies that a class of men who profess to love the truth as their lives are seeking to appear under false colors. To cite examples from my own profession only, I have always maintained that such men as Davy, Dalton, and Faraday were as truly learned, as highly cultivated, and as capable of expressing their thoughts in appropriate language, as the most eminent of their literary compeers, and I shall continue to maintain this proposition before our American community, and I have no question that sooner or later my claim will be allowed, and the doors of the "Guild of the Learned" will be opened to all scholars who have acquired by cultivation the same power which these great men held in such a pre-eminent degree by gift of Nature.
Lastly, I am persuaded that in a large body politic like this it is unwise, and in the long run futile, to attempt to protect any special form of culture at the expense of another. If one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; and what is for the interest of the whole is in the long run always for the interest of every part. I would welcome every form of culture which has vindicated its efficiency and its value, and in so doing I feel that I should best promote the interests of the special department which I have in charge.
XI.
SCIENTIFIC CULTURE;
ITS SPIRIT, ITS AIM, AND ITS METHODS.[P]
I assume that most of those whom I address are teachers, and that you have been drawn here by a desire to be instructed in the best methods of teaching physical science. It has therefore seemed to me that I might render a real service, in this introductory address, by giving the results of my own experience and reflection on this subject; and my thoughts have been recently especially directed to this topic by the discussion in regard to the requisites for admission, which during the past year have actively engaged the attention of the faculty of this college.
At the very outset of this discussion we must be careful to make a clear distinction between instruction and education—between the acquisition of knowledge and the cultivation of the faculties of the mind. Our knowledge should be as broad as possible, but, in the short space of human life, it is not, as a rule, practicable to cultivate, for effective usefulness, the intellectual powers in more than one direction.
Let me illustrate what I mean from that department of knowledge which is at once the most fundamental and the most essential. I refer to the study of language. No person can be regarded as thoroughly educated who has not the power of speaking and writing his mother-tongue accurately, elegantly, and forcibly; and scholars of the present day must also command, to a considerable extent, both the French and the German languages. These three languages, at least, are the necessary tools of the American scholar, whatever may be the special field of his scholarship, and his end is gained if he has acquired thorough command of these tools. But if he goes further, and studies the philology of these languages, their structure, their derivation, their literature, the study may occupy a lifetime, and be made the basis of severe intellectual training. More frequently, and as most scholars think more effectually, such linguistic training is obtained by the study of the ancient languages, especially the Latin and the Greek, and no one questions the value and efficiency of this form of mental discipline. But obviously such a preparation is not necessary for the use of the modern languages as tools, or in order to acquire a knowledge of ancient history, of the modes of ancient life, or the results of ancient thought. In recent discussions a great deal has been said about the value of classical learning, and it has been argued that no man could be regarded as thoroughly educated who had never heard of Homer or Virgil, of Marathon or Cannæ, of the Acropolis of Athens or the Forum of Rome. Certainly not. But all this knowledge can be acquired without spending six years in learning to read the Latin and Greek authors in the original, or in writing Latin hexameters or Greek iambics. The discipline acquired by this long study is undoubtedly of the highest value, but its value depends upon the intellectual training which is the essential result, and not upon the knowledge of ancient life and thought, which is merely an incident.
Now, this same distinction, which I have endeavored to illustrate on familiar ground, must not be forgotten in considering the relations of physical science to education. Physical science may also be studied from two wholly different points of view: First, to acquire a knowledge of facts and principles, which are among the most important factors of modern life; secondly, as a means of developing and training some of the most important intellectual faculties of the mind—for example, the powers of observation, of conception, and of inductive reasoning.