The Psychology of Natural Sciences  studies vs. the Languages  as a Means of Culture 



question, namely the compar-  ative value of the great divisions of  knowledge as instruments of cul-  ture may be sought in two ways.  	One is to select men whose  culture apparently is due to profound  and exclusive scholarship in one and  men of like profound and exclusive  scholarship in another and compare  them as to their intellectual calibre.  	The other method consists  in marshalling all the faculties of  the human intellect before us and  then scrutinizing the matter and pro-  cesses peculiar to each of the grand 



divisions of knowledge and  determining how many of the  faculties it calls into disciplinal  exercise. This method of   inquiry is the only one that will  yield any satisfactory results.  	The first leads only to   vague conjectures. For in the first  place we are not acquainted inti-  mately with a sufficient number  of individual instances in compar-  ison with the vast multitude of   cultured minds, to conduct the  investigation with a reasonable hope  of arriving at the truth. Our gener- 



alizations are too limited and  imperfect for a valid conclusion.  They are like the vote taken on a   passenger train to determine the  next tenant of the White House.  Then again in the limited num-  ber of cases which we do know all  sorts of considerations complicate  the main question by mixing  themselves up with it , in a very per-  plexing manner. For example  early training, special proclivi-  ties, family traits &c. all have  their share in the production of  culture and it is impossible to 



settle how much that share is.  You may know half a score of  accomplished orators who are fine  classical scholars but you will al-  so find those who are too indolent  perhaps ever to have mastered a   sentence of Cicero and who yet ex-  cel the first in all the qualities  of effective oratory, by force of nat-  ural genius. There are, in this count-  ry, many successful journalists  who brought to the editorial chair   a degree of familiarity with the  Latin classics, but who does not  know that the ablest journalist 



of them all, cannot construe a   line of Virgil but bases his forci-  ble and pungent style, on a crit-  ical study of English literature.  Many generals whose achievements  in the field have challenged  the  admiration of the world, were  profound mathematicians and  some whose achievements were  equally great were not profound  mathematicians. Now how  much did his attainments in  mathematics help the success-  ful generals? How much did  the previous English or classical 



studies aid the effectiveness of  the editor or the orator? How   much absolutely - how much   comparatively? How much was   due to personal force, to versa-  tility, to assiduous practice?  Even the subjects themselves can-  not tell you. And yet though  it is impossible to decide, by   any such comparison, the rel-  ative values of English, Latin  and mathematics as stimulants  to effective thinking it is idle  folly to deny that they are each   important helps to it. 



The method of compar-  ing characters of individuals   as a means of determining the  disciplinary value of specific  studies having failed, let us  try the analytical method and  see what revelations it will make.  The faculties of the human intel-  lect may be easily stated accord-  ing to the order of their evolution.   Subtle and rapid as thought is  every analysis reveals a fixed order  in the growth and activity of the pow-  ers that produce it. The eye and  the ear open in infancy on a wide 



diversity of sights and sounds which  beget at first sensations that are  vague and feeble. Then as nature  renders these sensations more and  more vivid the dawning mind  slowly perceives that they are the  signs of an actual outer world  which is infinite in its variety and  endless in its beauty. Next as the  senses with growing strength give the  forms of things and the inflections  of sound in more definite outlines  and nicer distinctions, conception  holds them with a completer grasp  and memory, waked into life da- 



guerreotypes them in brighter pic-  tures upon her tablets and as these  increase in number and clearness  judgment enters upon her office,  assorts them into classes and grad-  ually moulds them into the forms  of permanent knowledge. Mean-  time, imagination on expanded  wing surveys the accumulated  treasures of sense and judgment,  makes the capricious selections,  and combining them anew after  an ideal of things unknown  turns them to shapes and "gives  to airy nothingness a local habi- 



tation and a name." Finally  reason, the crowning glory of the  human intellect, latest in action  and maturity taking for her ma-  terial the truths which her sister-  hood of powers has gathered bridges  over the dim gulf that separates  the known from the unknown  world and reveals to the soul its  relations to the endless duration  and infinite power that lie be-  yond.   End here  	All this is I confess but  a bungling statement of the or-  der in the activity of faculties 



between whose subtle movements  no intervals are perceptible. In-  dulge me therefore in an attempt   at a little more careful and crit-  ical analysis. It shall be brief  at any rate.  	Of the five senses three  only, to wit, touch, hearing and  sight, minister to the intellect. Of  these touch as an intellectual sense  is limited to impressions of absolute  resistance. As the medium of all  other tactual qualities such as cold  and heat it is an animal sense  whose purpose like that of touch 



and smell is simply to protect   and preserve the body. Its most  important office as an agent of  the intellect is to train the eye by   its earlier activity to the perception  of form through color and in later  life it is mainly superseded by  the superior delicacy quickness  and range of that wonderful  organ. The eye and the ear then  are practically the organs through  which the intellectual senses of  of sight and hearing transmit  ideas from the outer to the inner  world. I need not say that for the 



one all the undulations of sound  and for the other the innumerable  qualities of matter as revealed through  color, light, & shade, constitute   their appropriate objects nor need I  say that upon the training they re-  ceive to habits of exhaustive obser-  vation will depend the sharpness   of outline, the clearness and com-  pleteness of the ideas they convey.  Following sense perception through  the eye and the ear, comes in sub-  tle succession the conceptive pow-  er, that faculty which catches the  idea transmitted through sense 



and holds it steadily until the  mind can scrutinize its properties  parts and relations. But with  the first movement in the concep-  tion of material objects is awaken-  ed also the power to conceive the  invisible, the absolute, the in-  finite, so that aroused by the  first ideas which the eye gath-  ers in its visual range there   flashes upon the soul intuitive-  ly the conception of relation &  number, of substance and cause,   of endless duration and of bound-  less space. These ideas, without 



negatives, bringing at their first ap-  pearance an irresistible convic-  tion of their external reality, have  lucidity and fulness just in ra-  tio to the distinctness of the ideas  of sense that suggest them. Mem-  ory next is excited to her earliest efforts  by the reiterated presentments of sense  conception. The first dim ideas she  gathers groups and reproduces are   notions from the material world  transmitted mainly through the ear   and the eye, and the definiteness  and accuracy with which she holds   and restores to consciousness these 



primary ideas, will be measured  precisely by the definiteness and  accuracy with which they are pre-  viously transmitted by the senses  and grasped by the conceptive  power. Thus the earlier habits of  memory are formed and fixed un-  der the tutelage of the intellectual  senses. The elements of nearly all the  more complex ideas she treasures up  in later life, are derived from these  and so far especially to the con-  ceptions of sight exceed all others  in number and clearness, that even  the most cultivated minds uncon- 



sciously endeavor to make them  the standards of measurement for  their intuitive ideas. We constant-  ly strive, if I mistake not to reduce   vaguely to the forms peculiar to the   ideas of sight our notions of number  and space, substance, cause, eter-  nity & God. We need hardly remark  that it is the full and final office  of memory to receive, retain, and  restore not only the conceptions of  sense but those of all the other pre-  sentative faculties. And now be-  ginning her first feeble affirma-  tions upon the concrete ideas which 



sense and memory have furnish-  ed judgment enters upon the  threefold process by which she   combines them into ideas which   represent classes. In an order that  is invariable she proceeds 1st by   analysis to affirm the properties  parts and relations of the ideas  under inspection, 2nd by abstract-  ion to affirm the existence of these  properties and relations conceived  as entities separate from the objects  to which they belong, 3dly by syn-  thesis to classify under these ab-  stract ideas assumed as standards 



of comparison, all the individual  conceptions which the senses and  memory have supplied and in   this manner to form the generic  ideas which as all language  shows constitutes largely our in-  tellectual furniture. Who does not  perceive that the processes by which  judgment starting with con-  crete conceptions arrives at abstract  and generic ones, are accurate  and exhaustive according to the  completeness and fullness of the  materials gained through action  of the preceding faculties. But 



in the succession of acts by which  judgment gathers individual  into generic conceptions there is   a point of divergence which we  have yet to notice. At the comple-  tion of the second step wherein the  mind attains to abstract notions  of relations and properties by a   withdrawal of these in thought  from the concrete objects in which  they exist, it may proceed in two  directions. It may, as I have alread-  y said, employ these abstract con-  ceptions as criteria in completing  the classification of its individ- 



ual ideas, or it may combine them  into new wholes different from any  of the conceptions of memory or   sense. This is the faculty of imagi-  nation. Its crudest and earliest  materials are parts of sense con-  ceptions which it unites into forms  more or less grotesque. Its genuine  materials however are the qualities  of concrete conceptions analyzed  and abstracted and these it unites  at will, into new conceptions to real-  ize certain ideals which are pre-  sented by the intuitive faculty.  It combines these elements for ex- 



ample into ideas which shall re-  alize the ideal of beauty and their  expression gives rise to such arts as  poetry, music, painting, and land-  scape gardening. It combines to  realize the ideal of use and con-  ceptions that result find express-  ion in arts like architecture, engi-  neering, and horticulture. Now  beyond doubt the products of im-  agination owe their excellence  in some sense to the perfection  and variety of the elements sup-  plied by the earlier action of the  powers we have named. But the 



faculty in which the series of in-  tellectual powers culminates is that  which so employs the ideas gained  by classification as to evolve new  notions out of them. It is, in fact,   on the reasoning power that the  progress of knowledge mainly de-  pends. A few statements will give  its processes with a clearness suf-  ficient for our purpose. In the  first place its materials, except  the primary truths, are the classi-  fied conceptions and therefore  its action must begin when judg-  ment has completed its final act 



in the process of classification.  Secondly, through the whole series  of mental movements from the  perceptions of sense to the con-  ceptions of classes there has been  if  we except the process of imagination  a gradual but definite preparation  of knowledge for the action of the  reasoning faculty. Thirdly that   reason acting on class conceptions  proceeds in judgments arranged  in such order that the final one  shall announce the new knowl-  edge elaborated from the rest  and finally that it employs two 



methods which govern its entire ac-  tivity. In one of these, namely, the  inductive method which naturally  precedes the other in the reasoning that concerns the  affairs of life, the mind simply pro-  ceeds by synthesis to scrutinize the   individual conceptions of which  the idea of a class is composed,  and if a sufficient number of  these is found to contain some  character or quality which is un-  der inspection, to affirm that it   belongs to the entire class under  which these individuals are ranged.  The province of inductive reason- 



ing is in short to evolve cause  from effects, principle from  facts, law from events. In the   other method which reverses the  inductive process, the mind fastens  its attention on some particular  of a class conception, affirms that  a property which belongs to the   class belongs of necessity to this  particular which is contained  in it. Of the triplets into which   the judgments in deductive reason-  ing have an irresistible tendency  to arrange themselves the last  judgment affirms the conclu- 



sion and the new idea it evolves  is raised by the process to a level  in point of certainty with the  first which is the premise. This  series of judgments, it is needless to  say, is the syllogism and each  truth it elaborates becomes in turn  the premise of a new syllogism  and so on without end. Such is  the simple but marvelous ma-  chinery which gives to the ideas of  the human intellect the power of  endless reproduction.  	Now this analysis reveals  an invariable succession of processes 



by which our ideas admitted through  the senses are gradually modified  until they are prepared for the  crowning act of reason. It reveals  also that if any process in this in-  variable succession is imperfect  all the subsequent ones will be  imperfect also and that if any  single step were wholly omitted it  would break the succession of   thought and make its further prog-  ress impossible. Imagination  for example could never get beyond  a vague and rudimentary action  until the processes of analysis and  



abstraction have worked up for  its material the ideas gained  through the senses. On the ideas  previously gained through the  senses depend the presence and  clearness of such intuitions as  power, duration, number, and  space, and the generic concept-  tions which constitute the proper  objects of reason would be utterly   wanting were it not for the con-  crete ones which the senses have  collected.  	If it be asked then on  what condition the trust and 



broadest culture depends the in-  evitable answer is a thorough   and complete discipline of the  intellectual senses and if it be  asked again what are the means  for accomplishing this the irre-  sistable response is the forms and  facts of the material world. Hav-  ing shown that the material world  furnishes, in just proportions, the  appropriate objects for nearly all the pro-  cesses employed in the elabora-  tion of thought and premising that  the same objects when classified  under the relations of science are 



effective to induce throughout  the series of powers that severity   of action which results in discip-  line I see not how we can escape  the conclusion that the study of   the natural sciences lies at the  basis of symmetrical culture, and  this conviction which we have  arrived at by inspecting the   functions of consecutive thought,  is greatly strengthened by a like  inspection of any branch of   natural science which presents  its objects to the eye. Scrutinize  for instance the facts and the  



modes of procedure which Botany  embodies, and you will not fail  to find that the order of consecu-  tive steps by which it advances  from individual to general ob-  jects corresponds beautifully to the  order we have found in the succession  of thought. Being itself as a science  the outgrowth of nearly all the intellectual  faculties acting harmoniously it  furnishes to these faculties in return  food for their symmetrical growth.  The vast variety of beautiful organiz-  ed forms it displays to the eye, are  the best possible incentives to judgment 



in the acts of analysis and abstract-  ion by which it ascends to a syste-  matic and complete classification.  On the one hand the variable qualities  and parts of its beautiful objects give to  the imagination proper nutrition. On   the other the constant qualities on  which its generalizations are based  become innumerable occasions for the  inductive reasoning which constitutes  so largely the reasoning of real life.  Nor is Botany deficient in matter  for deductive reasoning for as its  classes from order to species are well  defined and complete, they become 



the basis for the analytical move-  ment which is embodied in the syl-  logism. And this wonderful adap-  tation of the natural sciences to meet  the necessity for genuine culture, is  even better exemplified in the more ex-  perimental branches of analytical  chemistry and chemical physics,  for these branches, while they equal  botany in other respects, surpass it in  the wide field they open for the exer-  cise of inductive reasoning. But   the material sciences in whose matter  and methods we see such admira-  ble fitness to meet our educational 



needs, are themselves the creation of  modern thought. They indicate its  peculiar tendencies - they meas-  ure its marvellous progress and  they inevitably give shape to its cul-  ture. Dealing with the wide variety  of objects with which he comes daily  in contact their whole purpose and  scope is man's well being. They feed  him with better food, cloth him   in warmer fabrics - they give relief  to his pains and neutralize the pes-  tilence that walketh at noonday.  They guide the labor of the hand  bring salvation to the human muscle 



and turn the dead mould into market-  able products. They leap barriers,  tunnel mountains, light cities,  make knowledge ubiquitous  and give man the mastery of the for-  ces that would otherwise destroy him.  But especially have the modern   sciences lent their powerful incen-  tives to industry. They have wonder-  fully quickened, nay even reversed  the succession of those typical events  that once marked in long intervals  the progress of nations. Learning  no longer waits for material pros-  perity but precedes and produces 



it. The railroad does not follow  but leads civilization. The shriek  of the whistle startles the bison  of the plains. The cottage of the  first settler, the school house and  the college devoted to the teaching  of industrial science, stand to-  gether where the plow has hardly  yet broken the virgin soil. The eras   of toil and of culture, once separa-  ted by a century are blended  into one. Learning and labor  leaping the gulf that lay between  them have joined hands, each  lending aid and dignity to the 



other. The sciences whose develope-  ment has accomplished these mar-  vels, are answering the ends of a   universal philanthropy and their  claims upon the attention of the  student apart from their value as  stimulants to thought, rest on the  basis of a broad and solid utili-  ty.   	Having established the   rank of the natural sciences as a  means of education, let us submit  the ancient classics to a similar   test and settle by it their relative  worth as instruments of culture.  



Let us not in the analysis of their va-  rious values disturb the habitual  reverence with which many regard  these venerable literatures. I hasten to  confess that they had for me in my   college course an irresistible fasci-  nation and that my earliest and   highest ambition was to master the  text books in Latin and Greek. I hasten  also to acknowledge the salutary in-  fluence they have had on my habits  of study and thought. But no har-  mony of structure or loftiness of periods  no perfection in the whole machinery  of expression should ever shield these 



ancient tongues from the severest  questioning as to their precise effect  on the growth of mind. In the  regular college curriculum they have  held the place of honor for centu-  ries. More than one half of the six  years given in this country to higher  general education is bestowed on the dead  past to the practical ignoring of the  living present. Thousands of learn-  ed men of many generations have  yielded to the classical scheme  of education a traditionary def-  erence which borders on supersti-  tion. Many of the finest minds of 



the present day got their first in-  tellectual bent in mastering the syn-  tax and balancing the synonyms  of Latin and Greek. Even among those  who hear me there are perhaps some whose  feelings as I approach this delicate  theme, would prompt them to say  "Put off thy shoes from off thy feet  for the place whereon thou standest  is holy ground." Now these facts are  to say the least, strong presumptions  in favor of the classical system.  Their character and weight compel  respect. Neither against such evi-  dence nor indeed against my own 



convictions would I question  for one moment the absolute  value of the ancient classics as in-  centives to intellectual activity.  Moreover as a preparation for cer-  tain professions they are well nigh  indispensable. I would simply  enquire what is their comparative  value. Whether there are adequate  grounds for the predominance  which is given them in schemes for  general culture. In this brief and  busy life a small fraction only of   which can be devoted to an intel-  lectual preparation for its duties 



will not the group of studies which  bear more or less directly upon those  duties, result incidentally in a dis-  cipline of highest value to the student  simply on the ground of its availa-  bleness. If so then all classical   studies will take their rank accord-  ing to their degree of effectiveness as  agencies in preparation for special  professions or for actual duties.  	But before we go farther  let us see what place language should  maintain in a rational scheme of ed-  ucation. If any of my auditors  have perceived that my statements 



of the succession of acts by which  thought is elaborated were partial  and incomplete all that I can reply  is that I have anticipated them. I   gave, barely, the order of intellectual  movement and could not then divert  myself from it to notice its indispen-  sable helps. It is time to say that  though thought moves in steps whose success-  ion is invariable it could never get be-  yond a rudimentary action with-  out the aid of language. No act in  the entire intellectual series is possi-  ble unless a corresponding act of  the memory presents its materials. 



Now we are so constituded that ideas  on their first acquisition are exceed-  ingly evanescent and fleeting. Their ten-  dency is to disappear like breath on  the surface of polished steel. Without  stating the law of association by which  they take at last the forms of perma-  nent knowledge it is enough to say  that their retention is possible only by  innumerable reiterations and this is  accomplished by means of names.  The ear and the tongue are the first  educators of the memory. Every con-  crete idea gained from the outer   world must be crowned with a name 



which serves both to restore and to ex-  press it. The processes of analysis and  abstraction must be followed by ad-  jectives and abstract nouns which  serve a similar purpose. General  names bind, so to speak, the indi-  viduals of a class together and become  its indispensable sign in the processes  of reasoning. This language is abso-  lutely necessary to the progress of thought.  It restores the elements of thought in   memory.  It represents all the move-  ments of thought but it does not con-  statute them. It is an instrument  wonderful in its subtle forces but 



still an instrument. The sign is sub-  ordinate to the thing signified.  First the thing - then the idea and  then the name - this is the order of  nature in the early acquisition of   knowledge. On the variety and ful-  ness of the ideas the child gathers from  things through the eye and the ear  therefore depend the number  and clearness of the words he knows.  Thus the training of the senses is the  indispensable antecedent to an accu-  rate knowledge of language. If then  the thing precedes the name in the or-  der of knowledge and if in the attain- 



ment of culture we only systematize  and perfect the methods of nature  in her spontaneous processes I see not  how we shall escape the conclusion  that extent and accuracy in the   acquisition of language are formed  in the study of the material sciences.  Nor does it materially affect the sound  ness of this conclusion that lan-  guage thus acquired soon becomes  in turn the means of conveying to the  mind ideas of facts and things be-  yond the reach of the senses. Words  so employed whether single or in  groups address the imagination 



and the imagination realizes their  meaning by forming corresponding  ideas out of the properties and parts  abstracted from conceptions which  have been gained through the senses.  But the wider and more exact the range  of the senses the fuller and better the  material for the imagination.  Thus  again therefore the same conviction  forces itself upon us that a study of   the natural sciences, with their definite  facts and nomenclature, is the genuine  method of acquiring a knowledge of   language as a vehicle of thought. Dis-  cipline of the senses lies at the basis of 



scientific and primarily of literary  culture.   	But there comes a time -  a period in the progress of intellect-  ual growth when the mind attract-  ed by its own phenomena begins  the work of introspection. Through  the study of mathematics, psychology  and logic and language as such  we scrutinize the processes of thought,  the nature and relations of our own  ideas. Something of these studies  is essential to round out the culture  obtained in such liberal measure  from the natural sciences.