Scientific Culture, and Other Essays / Second Edition; with Additions

by Jr. Josiah P. Cooke

In our day there has arisen a warm discussion as to the relative claims of two kinds of culture, and attempts are made to create an antagonism between them. But all culture is the same in spirit. Its object is to awaken and strengthen the powers of the mind; for these, like the muscles of the body, are developed and rendered strong and active only by exercise; while, on the other hand, they may become atrophied from mere want of use. Science culture differs in its methods from the old classical culture, but it has the same spirit and the same object. You must not, therefore, expect me to advocate the former at the expense of the latter; for, although I have labored assiduously during a quarter of a century to establish the methods of science teaching which have now become general, I am far from believing that they are the only true modes of obtaining a liberal education. So far from this, if it were necessary to choose one of two systems, I should favor the classical; and why?

Language is the medium of thought, and can not be separated from it. He who would think well must have a good command of language, and he who has the best command of language I am almost tempted to say will think the best. For this reason a certain amount of critical study of language is essential for every educated man, and such study is not likely to be gained except through the great ancient languages; the advocates of classical scholarship frequently say, can not be gained. I am not ready to accept this dictum; but I most willingly concede that in the present state of our schools it is not likely to be gained. I never had any taste myself for classical studies; but I know that I owe to the study a great part of the mental culture which has enabled me to do the work that has fallen to my share in life.

But, while I concede all this, I do not believe, on the other hand, that the classical is the only effective method of culture; you evidently do not think so, for you would not be here if you did. But, in abandoning the old tried method, which is known to be good, for the new, you must be careful that you gain the advantages which the new offers; and you will not gain the new culture you seek unless you study science in the right way. In the classical departments the methods are so well established, and have been so long tested by experience, that there can hardly be a wrong way. But in science there is not only a wrong way, but this wrong way is so easy and alluring that you will most certainly stray into it unless you strive earnestly to keep out of it. Hence I am most anxious to point out to you the right way, and do what I can to keep you in it; and you will find that our courses and methods have been devised with this object.

When advocating in our mother University of Cambridge, in Old England, the claims of scientific culture, I was pushed with an argument which had very great weight with the eminent English scholars present, and which you will be surprised to learn was regarded as fatal to the success of the science "triposes" then under debate. The argument was that the experimental sciences could not be made the subjects of competitive examinations. Some may smile at such an objection; but, as viewed from the English standpoint, there was really a great deal in it, and the argument brought out the radical difference between scientific and classical culture.

The old method of culture may be said to have culminated in the competitive examinations of the English universities. We have no such examinations here. Success depends not simply on knowing your subject thoroughly, but on having it at your fingers' ends, and those fingers so agile that they can accomplish not only a prodigious amount of work in a short time, but can do this work with absolute accuracy. For the only approach we make to an experience of this kind, we must look to our athletic contests. It may of course be doubted whether the ability, once in a man's life, to perform such mental feats, is worth what it costs. Still it implies a very high degree of mental culture, and it is perfectly certain that the experimental sciences give no field for that sort of mental prize-fights. It is easy to prepare written examinations which will show whether the students have been faithful to their work, but they can not be adapted to such competitions as I have described without abandoning the true object of science culture. The ability of the scientific student can only be shown by long-continued work at the laboratory table, and by his success in investigating the problems which Nature presents.

We have here struck the true key-note of the scientific method. The great object of all our study should be to study Nature, and all our methods should be directed to this one object. This aim alone will ennoble our scholarship as students, and will give dignity to our scientific calling as men of science. It is this high aim, moreover, which vindicates the worth of the mode of culture we have chosen. What is it that ennobles literary culture but the great minds which, through this culture, have honored the nations to which they belong?

The culture we have chosen is capable of even greater things; not because science is nobler than art, for both are equally noble—it is the thought, the conception, which ennobles, and I care not whether it be attained through one kind of exercise of the mental faculties or another—but we are capable of grander and nobler thoughts than Plato, Cicero, Shakespeare, or Newton, because we live in a later period of the world's history, when, through science, the world has become richer in great ideas. It is, I repeat, the great thought which ennobles, and it ennobles because it raises to a higher plane that which is immortal in our manhood.

If I have made my meaning clear, and if you sympathize with my feelings, you will understand why I regard culture as so important to the individual and to the nation. The works of Shakespeare and of Bacon are of more value to England to-day than the memories of Blenheim or Trafalgar; and those great minds will still be living powers in the world when Marlborough and Nelson are only remembered as historical names.

I therefore believe that it is the first duty of a country to foster the highest culture, and that it should be the aim of every scholar to promote this culture both by his own efforts and his active influence. A nation can become really great in no other way. We live in a country of great possibilities; and the danger is that, as with many men I have known in college, of great potential abilities, the greatness will end where it begins. The scholars of the country should have but one voice in this matter, and urge upon the government and upon individuals the duty of encouraging and supporting mental culture for its own sake.

The time has passed when we can afford to limit the work of our higher institutions of learning to teaching knowledge already acquired. Henceforth the investigation of unsolved problems, and the discovery of new truth, should be one of the main objects at our American universities, and no cost grudged which is required to maintain at them the most active minds, in every branch of knowledge which the country can be stimulated to produce.