Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/57

Rh the world has become a competition of intellect, or we are marvelously unobservant of the change which is passing over Europe in the higher education of the people. Preparations for war will not insure to us the blessings and security of an enlightened peace. Protective expenditure may be wise, though productive expenditure is wiser.

"Were half the powers which fill the world with terror, Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and courts, Given to redeem the human mind from error— There were no need of arsenals and forts."

Universities are not mere storehouses of knowledge; they are also conservatories for its cultivation. In Mexico there is a species of ant which sets apart some of its individuals to act as honey-jars by monstrously extending their abdomens to store the precious fluid till it is wanted by the community. Professors in a university have a higher function, because they ought to make new honey as well as to store it. The widening of the bounds of knowledge, literary or scientific, is the crowning glory of university life. Germany unites the functions of teaching and research in the universities, while France keeps them in separate institutions. The former system is best adapted to our habits, but its condition for success is that our science-chairs should be greatly increased, so that teachers should not be wholly absorbed in the duties of instruction. Germany subdivides the sciences into various chairs, and gives to the professors special laboratories. It also makes it a condition for the higher honors of a university that the candidates shall give proofs of their ability to make original researches. Under such a system, teaching and investigation are not incompatible. In the evidence before the Science Commission many opinions were given that scientific men engaged in research should not be burdened with the duties of education, and there is much to be said in support of this view when a single professor for the whole range of physical science is its only representative in a university. But I hope that such a system will not long continue, for if it do we must occupy a very inferior position as a nation in the intellectual competition of Europe. Research and education in limited branches of higher knowledge are not incompatible. It is true that Galileo complained of the burden imposed upon him by his numerous astronomical pupils, though few other philosophers have echoed this complaint. Newton, who produced order in worlds, and Dalton, who brought atoms under the reign of order and number, rejoiced in their pupils. Lalande spread astronomers as Liebig spread chemists, and Johannes Müller biologists, all over the world. Laplace, La Grange, Dulong, Gay-Lussac, Berthollet, and Dumas, were professors as well as discoverers in France. In England our discoverers have generally been teachers. In fact, I recollect only three notable examples of men who were not—Boyle, Cavendish, and Joule. It was so in ancient as well as in modern times,