Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/501

Rh, instead of leaving the task to amateurs or charlatans. At present, unfortunately, too many able scientific men depreciate popular work and hold aloof from it. They do nothing themselves to interest the general public, and then lament the fact that the public does not become interested. Yet just here is where the beginning must be made. With a wider public interest in science will come a deeper public appreciation, and this will develop the tendencies necessary for the improvement of our colleges and schools. Until the people see and recognize the difference between true investigators and mere collectors of specimens, between original workers and text-book amateurs, little real progress can be made.

Organized effort is also needed. Just as lawyers or physicians band themselves together, so also men of science should combine for mutual self-protection against quackery. A man who had never been admitted to the bar could scarcely be chosen to a law professorship, neither could any one but a regular graduate be elected to teach in a respectable medical school. Why should not organization among chemists, geologists, or naturalists, produce in the long-run a similar state of affairs? Such an effective organization it might be difficult to bring about, and still something could be done. Even a very little improvement would be better than no improvement at all. Local scientific societies might do good in two ways: 1. By preventing, or at least opposing, bad appointments in colleges; 2. By furnishing the means for popular lectures and field-excursions. They could also, perhaps, do something toward breaking up the present vicious and absurd mode of teaching science by mere text-book recitations, and so help forward the adoption of correct methods. An attempt to teach drawing or music by lectures only, would be universally recognized as nonsensical; the same system of instruction applied to any one of the natural sciences is equally ridiculous. Nature must be studied at first hand to be properly understood.

Through legislation also something may be accomplished. This something may be very little, but a good many littles taken together aggregate much. Just as a single dollar may be the beginning of a great fortune, so one apparently trifling measure can become the starting-point of a sweeping reform. The first step to take in this direction is to prevent the issue of more charters. Inflation is as bad in education as it is in finance. No State which already contains more than one fair college or university should permit another to be established. Let the millionaires who wish to help learning give their money to institutions already in existence, or else not give at all. No benefaction is better than a mischievous benefaction. It is not long since Massachusetts lost a splendid opportunity to inaugurate the policy here recommended. The Methodist denomination of that State were discussing the foundation of a new educational institution in or