Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/132

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124
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

only twenty years ago. Things have not changed much in that time. If the spirit of competition was stamped into him, he will want it stamped into his children. If money is his chief preoccupation, he would not like to hear that a public-school teacher was doing anything to lessen the importance of money in their eyes. He would be willing enough that other children should learn that lesson, but not his own. The case, we are persuaded, is far from being an imaginary one. The average parent sends his children to school with no other view than that they shall be prepared for some money-making occupation; and he expects that that object shall be kept uppermost by the school authorities. This being the case, the "soul" that M. Brunetière desiderates runs a great risk of being contraband of our modern school systems; because it can not enter without coming at once into conflict with the spirit of moneyworship, and also with that of selfish ambition. Of course, if we had every reason to be satisfied with the moral progress of our people and the signs of the times generally, there would be no need to raise this question; we might assume that the schools were doing all that was required of them: but such is not the case; the signs of the times are in many respects unsatisfactory. The state has wrenched education from private hands, and now we have to consider what can be done to humanize the teaching which it is bestowing on the millions of our youth. Very many individual teachers are doubtless occupying themselves with the problem, but their efforts will not make up for general public indifference to it. A nation can not thrive on love of money, nor live on the virtues of a small minority. We must have "soul," or, to speak with more precision, the spirit of social duty and of moral responsibility, at the very base of our educational systems; otherwise education itself becomes a fraud and a snare, and the very agencies which should consolidate the social fabric will work for its disruption.


THE ALLEGED DOGMATISM OF SCIENCE.

In the above article we have touched, in passing, upon a change very frequently and very carelessly made against men of science that they are intolerant of opposition to their scientific theories, and in effect set up a kind of orthodoxy to which all must bow who desire to be considered rational and intelligent beings. The charge is utterly frivolous, as the most obvious facts attest. Consider first how it applies to some of the most prominent scientific workers of the century. Surely nothing of this kind could truthfully have been said of such men as Sir Humphry Davy and Michael Faraday, of Sir Charles Lyell or of Agassiz, of our own geologist Dana or our great botanist Gray. As to Darwin, all the world knows that candor and modesty were of the very essence of his character. We might pass rapidly in review a number of other eminent names the very mention of which would be a vindication from the charge, but it would be superfluous. When dogmatism appears it is nearly always on the part of men who have adopted their opinions at secondhand, and who have either ignored altogether, or paid little attention to, those elements of uncertainty which were not only fully present to the minds of the originators of the theories in question, but also fully expressed in their published works. This simply means that scientific leaders have the same experience that other leaders have had, and need to join in the