Chemical Digest
THIS MODERN CULTURE I n a recent article, "The Cultivated Man,"' Dr. Charles W. Eliot discusses the modifications made by the past century in the ideal of culture and the means of attaining that ideal which the modem system of education offers. Accepting Matthew Arnold's dictum that "educated mankind is governed by two passionsthe passion for pure knowledge and the passion for being of service or doing good," Dr. Eliot maintains that the nineteenth century's most significant contribution to the realization of these desires has been the scientific method of inquiry, and he quotes an admission of present-day humanists that "an interpenetration of humanism with science, and of science with humanism, is the condition of the highest culture." He indicates the elements that mold our latter-day man of culture as (1) the formation of character in the "stream of the world." "The stream," he says, "is what it has been, a mixture of foulness and purity, of meanness and majesty; but it has nourished individual virtue and race civilization." (2) An extensive knowledge of some great literature and the power to use a t least one's native language with elegance and accuracy. (3) Assimilation of some part of the store of human knowledge. What portion or portions of the infinite human store are mast proper to the cultivated man? The answer must be: those which enable him, with his individual personal qualities, t o deal best and sympathize mast with nature and with other human beings. I t is here that the passion for service must fuse with the passion for knowledge. It is natural to imagine that the young man who has acquainted himself with economics. the science of government, sociology, and the history of civilization in its motives, objects, and methods, has a better chance of fusing the passion for knowledge with the passion for doing good than the man whose passion for pure knowledge leads him t o the study of chemical or physical phenomena, or the habits and climatic distribution of plants or animals. Yet, so intricate are the relations of human beings t o the animate and inanimate creation that i t is impossible to foresee with what realms of nature intense human interests may prove to he identified. Thus the generation now on the stage has suddenly learned that some of the most sensitive and exquisite human interests such as health or disease, and life or death for those we love, are bound up with the life histories of parasites on the blood corpuscles or of certain varieties of mosquitoes and ticks. When the spectra of the sun, stars, and other lights began t o he studied, there was not the slightest anticipation that a cure for one of the most horrible diseases t o which mankind is liable might he found in the x-rays. While, then, we can still see
The Golden Book Magazine, 8,48590 (Oct.. 1928).
VOL. 5, No. 12
CHEMICAL DIGEST
1675
that certain subjects afford more obvious or frequent access to means of doing good and to fortunate intercourse with our fellows than other subjects, we have learned that there is no field of real knowledge that may not suddenly prove contributory in a high degree to human happiness and the progress of civilization, and therefore acceptable as a warthy element in the truest culture.
(4) Dr. Eliot emphasizes as a final essential in the preparation of the cultivated man the training of the imagination. "Constructive imagination," he argues, is the great power of the poet as well as the artist; and the nineteenth century has convinced us that it is also the great power of the man of science, the investigator, and the natural philosopher. . . .The educated world needs t o recognize the new varieties of constructive imagination. . .the kind which conceived the great wells sunk in the solid rock below Niagara that contain the turbines, that drive the dynamos, that generate the electric force that turns thousands of wheels and lights thousands of lamps over hundreds of square miles oi adjoining territory; or the kind which conceived the sending of human thoughts across three thousand miles of stormy sea instantaneously, on nothing more substantial than ethereal waves.. . . . .They are calm, accurate, just and responsible; and nothing but beneficence and increased human well-being results from them. There is room in the hearts of twentieth-century men for a high admiration of these kinds of imagination, as well as for that of the poet, artist, or dramatist.
In his opening paragraphs, Dr. Eliot remarks that our system of popular education has to do,
.
. ..not with the highly gifted units, but with the millions who are more or less capable of being cultivated by the long, patient, artificial training called education. For us and our system the genius is no standard, hut the cultivated man is. To his stature we and many of our pupils may in time attain. He concludes, however, with an admonition to the teaching profession, that it should not expect to produce this finished type in any high ratio. We seldom find combined in any human being all the elements of the t . m.e . . . .We must not expect systematic education t o produce multitudes of highly cultivated and symmetrically developed persons; the multitudinous product will always he imperfect. . Let us as teachers accept no single element or kind of culture as the one essential; let us remember t h a t the best fruits of realculture are an open mind, broad sympathies, and respect for all the diverse achievements of the human intellect a t whatever stage of development they may actually he-the stage of fresh discovery, bald exploration, or complete conquest.
Turning from this contented survey, we find Dr. Bernard DeVoto, in 'Tools for the Intellectual Life,"2taking a particularized and by no means satisfied view of the means of culture available in the modem college system to the young man who looks upon education "as the process by which one's mind is given discipline and discrimination, orientation in the modern world and understanding of it, and the adult ability to derive satisfaction from knowledge and from the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake." Harper's Magazine, 941, 60%9 (Oct., 1928)
Dr. DeVoto seems to have chosen a still purer type, one with a single passion, unhampered by that desire for service, "the omnipresent sense of social obligation" which Dr. Eliot stresses. Prom the path of this youth, admitted to be so nearly hypothetical as to represent not more than one per cent of all undergraduates, Dr. DeVoto sweeps, with a determined program, the "fetish of the degree." This selected student lacks the indolent concept of education as an entity whose achievement can he blown in the bottle or stamped on the label.. . . .All he asks of his college is that he he allowed to take there the first steps toward a method of thinking which he hopes eventually to make habitual-to put under way a process which will continue and, ideally, will accelerate during the rest of his life. I n other words, his demand is that he he made familiar with the capacities and limitations of certain intellectual tools, and that he he given sufficient practice with them to master the technic with which they may he effectively employed. Leaving college a t the end of the traditional four years, he will not he an educated man, not a man warranted camolete in the intellectual life. hut a man who has, in the process of learning t o use the twls of knowledge, acquired some knowledge perhaps, hut primarily the means of acquiring more.
Dr. DeVoto advocates the facile use of the tool of linguistic proficiency for a proper concept of the modern world and of a man's place in it. He recommends mathematics (but only to those naturally adapted to it) as a help toward the great goal of intelligent men, impersonal thinEing. If he has a turn for mathematics and develops i t sufficiently, he will eventually he able to think of phenomena purely as phenomena. He will then he able t o bring to the chaos of thinking one of the most effective tools for the resolution of chaos. He will have a considerable reward, also, in his ability to understand mathematical thinking in fields outside the traditional ones of mathematics.
The third essential, says Dr. DeVoto, is the study of science. Physics, chemistry, and zoology are recommended
.
.. .on the ground that they deal directly with basic properties of matter and with basic properties of life-with the reality of the objective world. . . . . .The essential is that the student study as much science as possible. . . . .till he knows and understands the concepts of science, the methods of science, the results of science-and, let me add, the true nature of what science is not as well as what i t is, its limitations, and the problems that i t does not hope t o solve. With the mastery of these tools, Dr. DeVoto considers his student ready for the invasion of the fields of history and literature, but in these, He will avoid courses.. .he can do better by himself. This is not to say that he will avoid the men who give the courses. He must regard them as specialists, t o be freely consulted for guidance. . . .He needs expert guidance not only for hibliographical purposes hut also t o avoid the disaster of undirected reading on routes already charted. In such a d a n of education.. . .perpetual wrangling is a necessity. Education becomes a series of disputes with men who know more than oneselfsustained contention with experts while one tries to make oneself an expert as well. ~
~
V ~ L5,. No. 12
CHEMICAL DIGEST
1677
Since Dr. DeVoto admits this one element in the modern college, the contact of professor and student, as a formative influence for his young aspirant to pure culture, he would perhaps agree with the conclusions of William B. Munro who, in an article entitled "Quack-Doctoring the CollegesnSoutlines a weary and conflicting list of reforms which are daily urged on our institutions of learning. Dr. Mumo says, There is no substitute and there never can be any substitute for men in the proccss ol education-lor earnest, enthusiastic and capable men in the faculty and in the student body. Given these you have a great college; without them, all the new-fangled methods 'will never avail an institution much. Nearly all the problems of collegiate education merge into two fundamental ones-handpicking the student body and recruiting the faculty. The college that dws both things well is on the high road t o ultimate distinction; and the one that relegates them to a secondary place in its program, while i t gws philandering after mirages, is inexorably headed to the rear of the procession. It is men, not methods or measures, that determine whether a college shall be first-rate or second class. Or, to put it more accurately, first find the men and the methods will take care of themselves. I should like to find some college with the right men and the wrong methods of education. I don't believe there is one.
M. A. C. Harper's MagaEine, 940, 47&82 (Sept., 1928).
