Page:Essays and Addresses.djvu/651

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study of language, and in the higher criticism. Nor, again, does any one question that the studies of the natural sciences are instruments of intellectual culture of the highest order. The powers of observation and of reasoning are thereby disciplined in manifold ways; and the scientific habit of mind so formed is in itself an education. To define and describe the modes in which that discipline operates on the mind, is a task for the man of science; it could not, of course, be attempted by any one whose own training has been wholly literary. But there is one fact which may be noted by any intelligent observer. Many of our most eminent teachers of science, and more especially of science in its technical applications, insist on a demand which, in the province of science, is analogous to a demand made in the province of literary study by those who wish such study to be a true instrument of culture. As the latter desire that literature should be a means of educating the student's intelligence and sympathies, so the teachers of science, whether pure or applied, insist on the necessity of cultivating the scientific imagination, of developing a power of initiative in the learner, and of drawing out his inventive faculties. They urge that, in the interests of the technical industries themselves, the great need is for a training which shall be more than technical,—which shall be thoroughly scientific. Wherever scientific and technical education attains its highest forms in institutions of University rank, the aim is not merely to form skilled craftsmen, but to produce