Part 3

Do not attempt to reason on insufficient data. Multiply your observations or experiments, and when your premises are ample, the conclusion will generally take care of itself. Are you in doubt in regard to a mineral specimen? Repeat your observations again and again, multiply them with the aid of the blow-pipe or goniometer, compare the specimen with known specimens which it resembles, until either your doubts are removed or you are satisfied that you are unequal to the task; and remember that, in many cases, the last is the only honest conclusion.

Are you in doubt in regard to the reactions of the substance you are analyzing, whether they are really those of a metal you suspect to be present? Do not rest in such a frame of mind, and, above all, do not try to remove the doubt by comparing your experience with that of your neighbor, but multiply your own experiments; procure some compound of the metal, and compare its reactions with those you have observed until you reach either a positive or a negative result.

Remember that the way to remove your doubts is to widen your own knowledge, and not to depend on the knowledge of others. When your knowledge of the facts is ample, your inferences will be satisfactory, and then an unexplained phenomenon is the guide to a new discovery. Do not be discouraged if you have to labor long in the dark before the day begins to dawn. It will at last dawn to you, as it has dawned to others before, and, when the morning breaks, you will be satisfied with the result of your labor.

Moreover, I feel confident that such experience will very greatly tend to increase your appreciation of the value of scientific studies in training the reasoning faculties of the mind. This, as every one must admit, is the best test of their utility in a scheme of education, and it is precisely here that I claim for them the very highest place. It has generally been admitted that mathematical studies are peculiarly well adapted to train the logical faculties, but still many persons have maintained that, since the mathematics deal wholly with absolute certainties, an exclusive devotion to this class of subjects unfits the mind for weighing the probable evidence by which men are chiefly guided in the affairs of life.

But, without attempting to discuss this question, on which much might be said on both sides, it is certain that no such objection can be urged against the study of the physical sciences if conducted in the manner I have attempted to describe. These subjects present to the consideration of the student every degree of probable evidence, accustoming him to weigh all the evidence for or against a given conclusion, and to reject or to provisionally accept only on the balance of probabilities. Moreover, in practical science, the student is taught to follow out a chain of probable evidence with care and caution, to eliminate all accidental phenomena, and supply, by experiment or observation, the missing links, until he reaches the final conclusion--an intellectual process which, though based wholly on probable evidence, may have all the force and certainty of a mathematical demonstration.

Indeed, that highly valued scientific acumen and skill which enables the student to brush away the accidental circumstances by which the laws of Nature are always concealed until the truth stands out in bold relief, is but a higher phase of the same talent which marks professional skill in all the higher walks of life. The physician who looks through the external symptoms of his patient to the real disease which lurks beneath; the lawyer, who disentangles a mass of conflicting testimony, and follows out the truth successfully to the end; the statesman, who sees beneath the froth of political life the great fundamental principles which will inevitably rule the conduct of the state, and thus foresees and provides for the coming change; the general, who discovers amid the confusion of the battlefield the weak point of his enemy's front; the merchant, even, who can interpret the signs of the unsettled market--employ the same faculty, and frequently in not a much lower degree, that discovered the law of gravitation, and which, since the days of Newton, has worked so successfully to unveil the mysteries of the material creation.

Moreover, I hope, my friends, that you will come to value scientific studies, not simply because they cultivate the perceptive and reasoning faculties, but also because they fill the mind with lofty ideals, elevated conceptions, and noble thoughts. Indeed, I claim that there is no better school in which to train the æsthetical faculties of the mind, the tastes, and the imagination, than the study of natural science.

The beauty of Nature is infinite, and the more we study her works the more her loveliness unfolds. The upheaved mountain, with its mantle of eternal snow; the majestic cataract, with its whirl and roar of waters; the sunset cloud, with its blending of gorgeous hues, lose nothing of their beauty for him who knows the mystery they conceal. On the contrary, they become, one and all, irradiated by the Infinite Presence which shines through them, and fill the mind with grander conceptions and nobler ideas than your uneducated child of Nature could ever attain.

Remember that I am not recommending an exclusive devotion to the natural sciences. I am only claiming for them their proper place in the scheme of education, and I do not, of course, deny the unquestionable value of both the ancient and the modern classics in cultivating a pure and elevated taste. But I do say that the poet-laureate of England has drawn a deeper inspiration from Nature interpreted by science than any of his predecessors of the classical school; and I do also affirm that the pre-Raphaelite school of painting, with all its grotesque mimicry of Nature, embodies a truer and purer ideal than that of any Roman fable or Grecian dream.

And what shall we say of the imagination? Where can you find a wider field for its exercise than that opened by the discoveries of modern science? And as the mind wanders over the vast expanse, crossing boundless spaces, dwelling in illimitable time, witnessing the displays of immeasurable power, and studying the adaptations of Omniscient skill, it lives in a realm of beauty, of wonder, and of awe, such as no artist has ever attained to in word, in sound, in color, or in form. And if such a life does not lead man to feel his own dependence, to yearn toward the Infinite Father, and to rest on the bosom of Infinite Love, it is simply because it is not the noble in intellect, not the great in talent, not the profound in knowledge, not the rich in experience, not the lofty in aspiration, not the gifted in imagery, but solely the pure in heart, who see God.

Such, then, is a very imperfect presentation of what I believe to be the value of scientific studies as a means of education. In what I have stated I have implied that, for these studies to be of any real value, the end must be constantly kept in view, and everything made subservient to the one great object.

To study the natural sciences merely as a collection of interesting facts which it is well for every educated man to know, seldom serves a useful purpose. The young mind becomes wearied with the details, and soon forgets what it has never more than half acquired. The lessons become an exercise of the memory and of nothing more; and if, as is too frequently the case, an attempt is made to cram the half-formed mind in a single school-year with an epitome of half the natural sciences--natural philosophy, astronomy, and chemistry, physiology, zoölogy, botany, and mineralogy, following each other in rapid succession--these studies become a great evil, an actual nuisance, which I should be the first to vote to abate. The tone of mind is not only not improved, but seriously impaired, and the best product is a superficial, smattering smartness, which is the crying evil not only of our schools but also of our country.

In order that the sciences should be of value in our educational system, they must be taught more from things than from books, and never from books without the things. They must be taught, also, by real living teachers, who are themselves interested in what they teach, are interested also in their pupils, and understand how to direct them aright. Above all, the teachers must see to it that their pupils study with the understanding, and not solely with the memory, not permitting a single lesson to be recited which is not thoroughly understood, taking the greatest care not to load the memory with any useless lumber, and eschewing merely memorized rules as they would deadly poison. The great difficulty against which the teachers of natural science have to contend in the colleges are the wretched tread-mill habits the students bring with them from the schools. Allow our students to memorize their lessons, and they will appear respectably well, but you might as easily remove a mountain as to make many of them think. They will solve an involved equation of algebra readily enough so long as they can do it by turning their mental crank, when they will break down on the simplest practical problem of arithmetic which requires of them only thought enough to decide whether they shall multiply or divide.

Many a boy of good capabilities has been irretrievably ruined, as a scholar, by being compelled to learn the Latin grammar by rote at an age when he was incapable of understanding it; and I fear that schools may still be found where young minds are tortured by this stupefying exercise. Those of us who have faith in the educational value of scientific studies are most anxious that the students who resort to our colleges should be as well fitted in the physical sciences as in the classics, for otherwise the best results of scientific culture can not be expected. As it is, our students come to the university, not only with no preparation in physical science, but with their perceptive and reasoning faculties so undeveloped that the acquisition of the elementary principles of science is burdensome and distasteful; and good scholars, who are ambitious of distinction, can more readily win their laurels on the old familiar track than on an untried course of which they know nothing, and for which they must begin their training anew.

We have improved our system of instruction in the college as fast as we could obtain the means, but we are persuaded that the best results can not be reached without the coöperation of the schools. We feel, therefore, that it is incumbent upon us, in the first place, to do everything in our power to prove to the teachers of this country how great is the educational value of the physical sciences, when properly taught; and secondly, to aid them in acquiring the best methods of teaching these subjects. It is with such aims that our summer courses have been instituted, and your presence here in such numbers is the best evidence that they have met a real want of the community. We welcome you to the university and to such advantages as it can afford, and we shall do all in our power to render your brief residence here fruitful, both in experience and in knowledge; hoping, also, that the university may become to you, as she has to so many others, a bright light shining calmly over the troubled sea of active life, ever suggesting lofty thoughts, encouraging noble endeavors, and inciting all her children to work together toward those great ends, the advancement of knowledge and the education of mankind.

II.

THE NOBILITY OF KNOWLEDGE.

_An Address delivered before the Free Institute at Worcester, Massachusetts, July 28, 1874._

Within a comparatively few years schools for the instruction of artisans have become a prominent feature in the educational systems both of this country and of Europe, and seem destined to supersede the old system of apprenticeships. The establishment of these schools has been an important step in human progress, not because any great advantage has been gained in the cultivation of mechanical skill, but because here the future mechanic acquires culture of the mind as well as skill of the hand. Indeed, it may be doubted whether our utilitarian age can ever successfully compete with those "elder days of art" when

"Builders wrought with greatest care Each minute and unseen part."

But, if our industrial schools do not make better mechanics than the workshops of the olden time, they certainly educate better men, and, by adding to skill, knowledge, they are elevating the mechanic and ennobling his calling.

If, therefore, these schools are the representatives in our age of the workshops with their bands of apprentices in the days of yore, then that by which the schools are distinguished, that which they have added to the old system, is not art but mental culture; and therefore, when asked to address you on this occasion, I could think of no more appropriate subject than the Nobility of Knowledge.

Identified with an institution in which mental culture is the chief aim, I felt that I was asked to address a body of cultivated working-men with whom, though employed in the mechanic arts, the acquisition of knowledge was also a privilege and a pride. I felt, moreover, that a proper appreciation of the true dignity of knowledge, in itself considered, and apart from all economical considerations, is one of the great wants of our age and of our country.

"Knowledge is power." "Knowledge is wealth." These trite maxims are sufficiently esteemed in our community, and need not that they be enforced by any one. So far as knowledge will yield immediate distinction or gain, it is sought and fostered by multitudes. But, when the aim is low, the attainment is low, and too many of our students are satisfied with superficiality, if it only glitters, and with charlatanry, if it only brings gold.

Let me not be understood to depreciate the material advantages of learning. I rejoice that in this world knowledge frequently yields wealth and fame, and I should have little hope for human progress were the prizes of scholarship less than they are. Power and wealth are noble aims, and when rightly used may be the means of conferring unmeasured blessings on mankind; but I desire at this time to impress upon you, my friends, the fact that knowledge has nobler fruits than these, and that the worth of your knowledge is to be measured not by the credits it will add to your account in the ledger, or the position it may give you among men, but by the extent to which it educates your higher nature, and elevates you in the scale of manhood.

I address young men who are just entering on life, who are at an age when the mystery of our being usually presses most closely upon the soul, and whose aspirations for higher culture and clearer vision have not been deadened by the sordid damps of the world. Trust no croakers who tell you that your youthful visions are illusions, which a little contact with the real business of the world will dispel.

It is only too true that these visions will become fainter and fainter, if you allow the cares of the world to engross your thoughts; but, unless your higher nature becomes wholly deadened, you will look back to the time when the visions were brightest, as the golden period of your life, and let me assure you that, if you only are true to the aspirations of your youth, the visions will become clearer and clearer to the last, and, as we firmly believe, will prove to be the dawn of the perfect day.

My friends, if you have seen these visions, "the nobility of knowledge" has been a reality of your experience. You know that there is a life lived in communion with the thoughts of great men or with the thoughts of God as we can read them in Nature and Revelation, which is purer and nobler than a life of money-making or political intrigue, and I would that I could so bring you to appreciate not only the nobility, but also the happiness, of such a life as to induce you to try to live it.

Do you tell me that it is only granted to a few men to become scholars, and that you have been educated for some industrial pursuit? Remember, as I said before, that it is your special privilege to have been educated, to have added knowledge to your handicraft, and that this very knowledge, if kept alive so far as you are able, will ennoble your life. Knowledge, like the fairy's wand, ennobles whatever it touches. The humblest occupations are adorned by it, and without it the most exalted positions appear to true men mean and low.

Nor is it the extent of the knowledge alone which ennobles, but much more the spirit and aim with which it is cultivated, and that spirit and aim you may carry into any occupation, however engrossing, and into any condition of life, however obscure.

And let me add that what I have said is true not only of the individual, but also, and to an even greater degree, of the nation. Our people, for the most part, look upon universities and other higher institutions of learning as merely schools for recruiting the learned professions, and estimate their efficiency solely by the amount of teaching work which they perform. But, however important the teaching function of the university may be, I need not tell you that this is not its only or chief value to a community. The university should be the center of scientific investigation and literary culture, the nursery of lofty aspirations and noble thoughts, and thus should become the soul of the higher life of the nation. For this and this chiefly it should be sustained and honored, and no cost and no sacrifice can be too great which are required to maintain its efficiency; and its success should be measured by the amount of knowledge it produces rather than by the amount of instruction it imparts.

Harvard College, by cherishing and honoring the great naturalist she has recently lost, has done more for Massachusetts than by educating hosts of commonplace professional men. The simple title of teacher, which in his last will Louis Agassiz wrote after his name, was a nobler distinction than any earthly authority could confer; but remember he was a teacher not of boys, but of men, and his influence depended not on the instruction in natural history which he gave in his lecture-room, but on his great discoveries, his far-reaching generalization, and his noble thoughts. Although that man died poor, as the world counts poverty, yet the bequest which he left to this people can not be estimated in coin.

It is a sorry confession to make, but it is nevertheless the truth, that, if we compare our American universities, in point of literary or scientific productiveness, with those of the Old World, they will appear lamentably deficient. Let me add, however, that this deficiency arises not from any want of proper aims in our scholars, but simply from the circumstance that our people do not sufficiently appreciate the value of the higher forms of literary and scientific work to bear the burden which the production necessary entails. Scholars must live, as well as other men, and in a style which is in harmony with their surroundings and cultivated tastes, and their best efforts can not be devoted to the extension of knowledge unless they are relieved from anxiety in regard to their daily bread.

In our colleges the professors are paid for teaching and for teaching only, while in a foreign university the teaching is wholly secondary, and the professor is expected to announce in his lectures the results of his own study, and not the thoughts of other men. Until the whole status of the professors in our chief universities can be changed, very little original thought or investigation can be expected, and these institutions can not become what they should be, the soul of the higher life of the nation.

It is in your power, however, to bring about this change, but the reform can be effected in only one way. You must give to your universities the means of supporting fully and generously those men of genius who have shown themselves capable of extending the boundaries of human knowledge, and demand of them, only, that they devote their lives to study and research, and let me assure you that no money can be spent which will yield a larger or more valuable return.

If you do not look beyond your material interests, the higher life of the nation, which you will thus serve to cherish and foster, will guard your honor and protect your home; and, on the other hand, what can you expect in a nation whose highest ideal is the dollar or what the dollar will buy, but venality, corruption, and ultimate ruin?

But, rising at once to the noblest considerations, and regarding only the welfare of your country and the education of your race, what higher service can you render than by sustaining and cherishing the grandest thought, the purest ideals, and the loftiest aspirations which humanity has reached, and making your universities the altars where the holy fire shall be kept ever burning bright and warm?

Do you think me an enthusiast? Look back through history, and see for yourselves what has made the nations great and glorious. Why is it that, after twenty centuries, the memory of ancient Greece is still enshrined among the most cherished traditions of our race? Is it not because Homer sang, Phidias wrought, and Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Thucydides, with a host of others, thought and wrote? Or, if for you the military exploits of that classic age have the greater charm, do not forget that were it not for Grecian literature, Thermopylæ, Marathon, and Salamis would have been long since forgotten, and that the bravery, self-devotion, and patriotism which these names embalm were the direct fruits of that higher life which those great thinkers illustrated and sustained.

And, coming down to modern times, what are the shrines in our mother country which we chiefly venerate, and to which the transatlantic pilgrim oftenest directs his steps? Is it her battlefields, her castles and baronial halls, or such spots as Stratford-on-Avon, Abbotsford, and Rydal Mount? Why, then, will we not learn the lesson which history so plainly teaches, and strive for those achievements in knowledge and mental culture which will be remembered with gratitude when all local distinctions and political differences shall have passed away and been forgotten?

While I was considering the line of discourse which I should follow on this occasion, an incident occurred suggesting an historical parallel, which will illustrate, better than any reflections of mine, the truth I would enforce. The ship Faraday arrived on our coast after laying over the bed of the Atlantic another of those electric nerves through which pulsate the thoughts of two continents, and as I read the description of that noble ship, fitted out with all the appliances which modern science had created to insure the successful accomplishment of the enterprise, I remembered that not a century had elapsed since the first obscure phenomena were observed, whose conscientious study, pursued with the unselfish spirit of the scientific investigator, had led to these momentous results, and my imagination carried me back to an autumn day of the year 1786, in the old city of Bologna, in Italy, and I seemed to assist at the memorable experiment which has associated the name of Aloysius Galvani with that mode of electrical energy which flashes through the wire cords that now unite the four quarters of the globe.