6. The study of the old to find the new. The principle of the telephone,
for instance, is as old as spoken language. The mere[1] pulses in the
air--carrying all the characteristics of what you say--may set in
vibration either the drum of my ear, or a disk of metal. How simple--and
how simple all true science is--when we understand it.
[Transcribers note 1: corrected from 'more']
8. The cultivation of the scientific judgment, and the inventive powers
of the mind. One great original investigator, made such by the direction
given his mind in one of our common schools, would be cheaply bought at
the price of all that the study of science in our schools will cost for
the next quarter of a century.
8. Honesty. If there is a study whose every tendency is more in the
direction of honesty and truthfulness--both with ourselves and with
others--than is the study of experimental science, I do not know what it
is.
Physical science, then, will help in making men and women out of our
boys and girls. It is worthy of a fair, earnest trial everywhere.
A few minutes each day in which a class or a school study science in
some of the ways I have indicated will give a knowledge at the end of a
term or a year of no mean value. The time thus spent will have rested
the pupils from their books, to which they will return refreshed, and
instead of being time lost from other study the work will have been made
enough more earnest and intense to make it again.
Apparatus for illustrating many of the ordinary facts of physics can be
devised from materials always at hand. Many more can be made by any
one skilled in the use of tools. In chemistry, the simplicity of the
apparatus, and comparative cheapness of ordinary chemicals, make the use
of a large number of beautiful and instructive experiments both easy and
cheap.
A nation is what its trades and manufactures--its inventions and
discoveries--make it; and these depend on its trained scientific men.
Boys become men. Their growing minds are waiting for what I urge you
to offer. Science has never advanced without carrying practical
civilization with it--but it has never truly advanced save by the use of
the experimental method. _And it never will_.
Let us then look forward to the time when our boys and young men--our
girls and young women--shall extend the boundaries of human knowledge by
its use, fitted so to do by what we may have done for them.
* * * * *