Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/423

Rh as they can get nowhere else. In a truly scientific education the art of drawing is an important element, and in the study of acoustics the musician wins great advantage. But we may look in other directions than these. No one can long handle a microscope without having his sense of the beautiful enlarged; nor can any one study modern astronomy without gaining the loftiest conceptions of the sublime. The true student of Nature and her phenomena ever sees order and symmetry coming out of chaos, and finds the rarest beauty hidden where to the unaided eye naught but ugliness exists. Must it not bring the highest satisfaction to the lover of beauty thus to find its traces everywhere? Can any student, who looks upon the universe with vision thus unobscured, fail to find in his studies the truest æsthetic culture?

Theoretically, then, we may conclude that the study of science, with modern languages, literatures, and philosophies as aids, does all for the mind that the old classical education ever did, and more. A higher discipline, a higher utility, and a higher culture, are its natural results. It trains memory, intellect, the perceptive faculties, and the sense of the beautiful simultaneously, insuring a symmetrical development. It brings men into closer relations with the spirit of modern civilization, bears directly upon all modern work, aids in practical afterlife as no other education can, and helps the student to grow in all directions. This education not only fills the mind, but at the same time deepens and broadens it. In every definable respect it is superior to the old system. The latter was good enough in its day, but the new surpasses it in ours.

Yet it may be urged that all this is theory, and not borne out by facts. It is easy to point out college after college in this country in which, apparently, the classical and scientific courses have been tried side by side, to the evident disadvantage of the latter. Can this be explained?

Three things must here be taken into consideration: namely, the character of most American colleges, the character of many professed teachers, and the methods of study.

Beginning with the colleges and universities, it is noteworthy that there are to-day in our country about three hundred institutions bearing those names. Of these, Ohio has twenty-eight, while Pennsylvania, Illinois, and New York, have each twenty or over. For this deplorable scattering of educational forces, denominational rivalry is chiefly to blame. Where, by judicious management, one really efficient institution might be established, half a dozen sects, jealous of each other, build up as many insignificant weaklings. Each college acts as a drag on all the others. Libraries, cabinets, and faculties are uselessly duplicated. Naturally, one result of this state of affairs is a lowering of educational standards. It would be well for education if the several States would compel each so-called "university" to act up to its pretensions, become what it claims to be, or else forfeit its