New conceptions in science : with a foreword on the relations of science and progress / by Carl Snyder.

Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: New conceptions in science : with a foreword on the relations of science and progress / by Carl Snyder. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    fair to compare for a moment the work of the two. The Smithsonian has no such resources, no such equipment, and, it may be added, no such far- reaching aims. It is to be noted in passing that almost all of the courses of the chief university of France, the Sorbonne, are equally open to the public, with neither formality nor price. There, for the trouble of entering its walls, at almost any time you may hear the chief luminaries of French science and French letters; you ma}^' listen to the elegant periods of M. Faguet, or, under the grace of M. Moisson’s facile discourse, feel the most recondite subjects take on the allures of romance. So far as I know, this is true of no American university. Paris has yet a fourth institution very close of kin to the Pasteur and the College. A couple of miles to the east of the university stands the old Jardin des Plantes, made famous by the genius of Cuvier. There a large number of professorships, touching all the various departments of scientific instruction, are set aside for original minds who seem to have a work in the scientific world to do. They are “blue ribbon” posts, and afford inde- pendence, leisure, and stimulus for that patient, un- remitting, undiscouraged toil which is at once the condition and the source of the best scientific work. There Professor Becquerel made his astonishing