Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 69.djvu/327

Rh be felt by comparing the strange and antiquated terms in the outline of Books III. and IV. of the Advancement, where Bacon catalogues the sciences, with the list of departments of study in some great university of to-day. The sciences of which Bacon knew have been advanced to a place far beyond the highest imaginings of even his great mind in that time; and new regions of knowledge have been opened of which he could not dream. Even more significant is the fact that we have given up believing in even the possibility of a finished science; all are unfinished, and therefore it is the duty of every devotee to labor for advance. The universities, after centuries of inertia, have at last waked, or rather been somewhat vigorously aroused, to their duty to be creators as well as conservators of the store of knowledge.

Thus when the sixteenth century had barely closed, Bacon pointed out these six ways in which higher education and research needed to advance: a more liberal curriculum, more generous financial support, better and more abundant apparatus for experiment and investigation, a rational organization of the course of study, sympathy and cooperation between all colleges and universities, and the prosecution of the 'unfinished sciences.' History has wonderfully justified his verdict, and we may well pronounce him the prophet of the modern university.