Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/499

Rh steam-engine, shall any one deny the discoveries of to-day an equal chance? If the slight and apparently useless knowledge of the ancients in regard to electricity has been growing larger and larger until it culminates in our magnificent system of telegraphy and telephony, who dare predict a limit to the utility of any knowledge at present existing, however insignificant it may now appear?

Thus far we have been considering science in its bearing upon the physical wants of our race. However, man has a threefold nature—physical, intellectual, and moral; and, while science has been ameliorating the first, it has had an important influence upon the others. It is a great truth, in regard to all our powers, that they become stronger as we use them. Thus the blacksmith's arm grows sinewy by wielding the hammer. Even so it is with our mental powers. They are impaired by idleness and strengthened by exertion; and, in the "struggle for existence" or effort to attain the mastery over Nature, our intellectual faculties are brought into lively exercise and are accordingly strengthened.

In these days people are often asking which is the better education, the classical or the scientific; but, without attempting to consider that question, two facts may be observed: First, that language being the work of man, in its study the student can rise no higher than the source; and that Nature being the product of an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent God, its study must lead a person

The second fact is, that without scientific invention classical education would be impossible. Suppose the modern printing-presses and paper-mills were swept out of existence, how rapidly would linguistic study come to an end! The fact is, that scientific researches in a thousand and one ways have made linguistic study possible, and lifted humanity from barbarism to civilization.

It would be pleasing in this connection to note how the various intellectual faculties are improved by the study of the sciences. Memory, abstraction, generalization, reason, and, in short, all our powers can be thus developed. However attractive the topic, the space allotted to an essay of this kind will not allow dwelling upon the utility of scientific pursuits as a means of mental discipline, and they are passed by with the simple remark that the study of Nature, while beneficial to all our faculties, is peculiarly adapted to the development of our powers of observation. For this purpose there was no provision made in the old style of education; and how important it was that some training should be given in this direction must be patent to every one.

The Russian proverb says of the non-observant man, "He goes through the forest and sees no fire-wood"; and Dr. Johnson once