most important." Here we touch the special note of science training. It teaches limits and bounds, the bounds of the solid fact. In literary culture the spirit projects itself into the world. It fuses, I might almost say, external reality by the breath of phantasy and reforms it according to its own free creative power. But science faces the spirit with adamantine walls, the unchangeable moenia mundi. Its god is the god of things as they are, not of things as we might imagine them to be. Its work is patiently to investigate, and humbly to obey. Science, therefore, teaches fairness, emancipation from prejudice and personal bias, and a supreme love of the truth. Its word is not freedom, but law. Everywhere it teaches law and the inescapable consequences of its breaking.

Despite the rapid upward curve of the scope and effectiveness of science instruction, its work is still far from done. The scientific culture of the age is but skin deep. Scratch it anywhere and one comes upon the strange delusions of the primitive savage. We are all acquainted with estimable people, cultured and lovely women, graduates of our high schools and colleges (tho seldom, I believe, in scientific courses), who have come under the spell of the recrudescence of an ancient illusion. They have been "set free." To them there are no solid facts. "Do not teach physiology in the schools, for the dear children really do not have any bodies," was the pith of their petition to the school board in one of the largest cities in Iowa. It is their faith that they can change at will this old world of ours and annihilate all its hardship and pain and disease. I know of nothing which will render immune to such vagaries except a continuous treatment of physical science administered in large doses. Let me emphasize the fact that science is in touch with external reality; it teaches the veracity of the world, and its discipline is therefore preeminently serious, healthful, and sane.

All this is related more or less closely with the last function of science teaching I shall take time to mention - the discipline of the reason. Language, with its vocabularies and paradigms, literature, with its imaginative interpretations, with its supreme sense of beauty and of form, rather than of substance and of truth, indispensable as both studies are in a liberal education, cannot develop the rational faculties. For this we must ever depend on the strenuous athletics of mathematics and of science. What geometry is as an educational instrument in deduction, that the inductive sciences may be made in training the reason to deal with the concrete facts of daily life. These sciences demand as a daily exercise comparison, judgment, reasoning from cause to effect and from effect to cause, the sifting of evidence, the testing of hypotheses, the calculus of probabilities. If the teachers of science in America can teach the scientific method to the rising generation, we need ask no other opportunity to join in the long war against credulity and superstition, for we shall

have helped to accomplish perhaps the chief mission of science in the world the rationalization of the social mind.

It was once said by Robert Louis Stevenson, that consummate artist in words: "No one knows better than I that as we go on in life we must part with prettiness and the graces." The time has come when in education prettiness and the graces ought at least to be made subordinate. Secondary and higher education may be likened to the two pillars of Solomon's porch. Wrought of solid metal, and crowned with chapiters of carven pomegranates and lily work, they were fitly named Jachin, He shall establish, and Boaz, In it is strength. However rich may be the decorations of the education of the future, I believe it will be established in the strength of science, using the word in the widest sense. If the understanding is more than imagination, if truth is more than beauty, science must needs be the central supporting column of all education after the reason has come in its development to surpass the faculties of earlier ripening.

The core of science in American culture will save it from any decadence. There have been, there are, decadent cultures, as there are decadent nations. Let me cite the chief historic examples :

1. The culture of the rhetoricians of Greece, a culture which concerned itself wholly with words and the art of public speech, and which at last made the very name of its professors, the sophists, a byword to all generations.

2. The culture of the last century of the Roman empire, a culture which was devoted to the study and imitation of models of literature even then ancient, and which was therefore smitten with barrenness even in the field of letters.

3. The culture of the English universities at a time comparatively recent, "caravansaries of idlesse" in the phrase of one of their distinguished graduates, where the flame of thought was fed with the ashes of ancient studies from which the vital interest had long since been burned out.

4. The culture of the universities of India today, a culture which the London Spectator has recently called rotten, which teaches the Bengali the masterpieces of English as the Roman was taught the masterpieces of Greek, and "indifferent as it is to science and the constructive arts, is ultimately to fall, and probably with a crash."

5. And last, the culture of China, a culture classical in the veneration of the ancient models of its literature, and exquisite in the cultivation of the amenities of speech, a culture which has lately excluded science from the empire by imperial edict, and which, more than any other internal. cause, is bringing to pass the dissolution of that venerable nation.

The strain of weakness in all these decadent cultures is clear. They make no provision for the education of the rational faculty of man thru the study of his environment. But we need apprehend no similar fate for education in America. It is woven of too many strands. A culture

which teaches literature, the highest expression of the thought of the world, and history, the story of the social evolution of man, and science, the knowledge of the laws of nature, of self, and of society-such a culture cannot become decadent; it cannot die except with the death of civilization itself.

THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF MUSEUMS

OLIVER CUMMINGS FARRINGTON, CURATOR OF GEology, field COLUMBIAN MUSEUM, CHICAGO, ILL.

The word in this title which I would emphasize is "museums." Neither laboratories, collections, nor field work are just now to engage our attention, but museums- - institutions founded for the preservation and exhibition of objects of science and art. We shall probably agree for this occasion, since this is the Science section of the Association, to confine our discussion to museums of science. I am confident, however, that any principles which we may discover regarding the possibility of education to be obtained from museums of science will apply equally well to museums of art. Tho the two cultivate different fields, they are embodiments of the same idea and have similar aims.

Regarding the general principles underlying the purpose of museums which gives them their chief importance as an educational factor, it will doubtless be generally admitted that museums stand for the study of things, in contrast to the study of words, or even of pictures of things. It was natural, perhaps, in the development of the race, that as man came to realize the power of words, their beauty and their value as means of communication, it should seem to him that the possibilities of progress lay chiefly along the line of their study, and that he should hitch his educational wagon to that star, forgetting that others might be as lofty and as brilliant. To a greater or less extent he also realized the advantages of using pictures of things to help the understanding and the intellect, but it is only within a comparatively short time that he has begun to see that to deal with the things themselves is still better. Things cannot lie; words about them may. Our neighbor's idea as communicated to us in words may be, and probably will be, helpful, but our neighbor is not infallible, and the only way for the individual to get individual truth is for him to deal with the things themselves.

To this study of things museums of science are one of the most recent contributions. Just when to date their birth it would be difficult to say. Probably for a number of centuries past housed collections worthy to some extent of the name of museums might be discovered here and there, altho these were in almost every case private rather than public institutions. But the inception of the museum of science as we know or conceive it is only a recent matter. We may agree with the late Secretary

Goode of the National Museum in fixing it no farther back than the London Exposition of 1851, where for the first time, as another has said, were realized the advantages of "gathering together within the limits of a day's walk objects which could otherwise be seen only by years of travel."

All the important scientific museums of our country are certainly subsequent to this date. The organization of museums in this country can be grouped about three periods, two of them following expositions. The first period was about 1860, and saw the erection of the Museum of the Boston Society of Natural History and the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology. The second was about 1876, and from it date the American Museum of Natural History of New York, the Peabody Museum of Yale University, the Museum of the Philadelphia Academy of Sciences, and the inception of the United States National Museum, altho the building which it now occupies was not completed till 1881. The third period followed the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, and to it belong the founding of the Field Columbian Museum in 1894, the Carnegie Museum in 1895, the Philadelphia Commercial and Golden Gate Museums in the same year, the Milwaukee Museum in 1898, the Denver Museum, just building, and numerous university museums.

In Europe the British Museum, in many respects the world's greatest museum at the present time, was not a vigorous institution until 1845, and the natural history department was not made a separate division until 1880. The great Austrian Museum of Natural History began in 1748 to occupy a corner in the National Library building, but it was not until 1876 that its present magnificent plan and building took shape. The Museum of Natural History of Paris in the Garden of Plants was founded in 1795, but only within the last five years it has undergone improvements so radical in their character that the old museum seems in contrast hardly to have been worthy of the name.

Is it any wonder, then, since these institutions are of so recent origin, that as educational appliances we have not yet learned by what handle to grasp them, and that they are in general approached with a feeling not far removed from bewilderment? There could be no better proof of this bewilderment than to notice, as anyone may if they will, the purely casual way in which most museum visiting is done. A vase here first catches the visitor's attention, then a mummy there, a moose here, a goose there, and so the spectator flits, butterfly like, from room to room, until the sum of the impressions he receives does not differ much in kind, if indeed it does in quantity, from that which he would gain by looking into a kaleidoscope. I cast no aspersions upon those who visit museums in this way. Often recreation is the only object sought, and if change is the secret of recreation, then such visiting furnishes it in an eminent degree. But such a practice can hardly be regarded as in accord

with the highest ideals of education, for, while it is true that a higher value than formerly is now placed upon education unconsciously imbibed, it is also true that the education which counts still comes largely as the result of study and application. This study may, of course, be to a certain extent unconscious, and need not be distasteful or laborious, thanks to modern pedagogical methods; but it must still be study.

The way to get education out of a museum, then, is to study it, and my aim will be simply to give a few practical hints as to the character of this study and how it may best be conducted.

My first point would be to say that museum study should be definite. The verdict of all teachers with whom I have talked as to the best means of securing valuable results from museum study is that some particular work, some special topic, should be assigned for each occasion, and that all effort for that occasion should be confined to that work and topic. A wise teacher would not tell his pupils to turn over the leaves of a textbook of chemistry for an hour or two and then expect them to know all about chemistry, or even anything about chemistry. How much more benefit is likely to be derived from a two hours' general visit to a museum ?

If, then, museum study is to be definite, what are some of the definite things that can be done? Let me suggest several, some of which I know have been tried, and with success.

For pupils of the lower grades, much use can be made of objects in museums for purposes of illustrating nature study. One Chicago school of the fourth grade of which I know conducts an exercise in nature study like this: The pupils are first taken to Stony Island, an old quarry in the city where fossils may be collected, and there gather and see in place a number of different kinds of fossils. Then they go to the museum and compare the fossils there with what they have found. They see their relations to the larger groups, and study a collection illustrating how fossils are formed. The reports of their studies are then submitted in the form of an essay on fossil making. The Whitechapel Museum of England seeks to aid use of its collections by inviting teachers to send in lists of their object lessons for time to time. The objects to be found in the museum illustrative of these lessons are pointed out to the teachers and they subsequently come with their pupils to see and study them.

The study of geography finds almost endless illustration in the natural history museum. The products of different countries, animal, vegetable, mineral, can be sought out and reported upon, so as to make more lasting impressions on the mind than if learned from books. Relief maps, which most museums provide in greater quantity than schools can do, give far more accurate ideas of geography than the ordinary maps. Observation of such maps will help the pupils to realize the why of geography; why the Sahara and the American deserts exist; why the old