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The most obvious particular wisdom of the present scientific period is undoubtedly just that concept denoted by the title of this volume, continuity. And this wisdom is advanced wisdom and, withal, wisdom which is very expedient and even indispensable at this day, as a reaction required to set right the over-specialization of recent minds thoughtful only of some little branch of knowledge.
The machinery of his volition, in all directions save one, has been clogged, through persistent neglect, due to over-specialization. His mind needs to be cleared, and it can be cleared it will clear itself if regular periods of repose are enforced upon it. As things are, it practically never gets a holiday from business.
Scholarship is evidently unable to do this for him; for, unfortunately, the same tendency to division of labor has also produced over-specialization in scholarship, with the sad result that when the scholar attempts to minister to a worker, he gives him the result of more specialization rather than an offset from it.
If the shop constantly tends to make the workman a specialist, then the problem of the educator in regard to him is quite clear: it is to give him what may be an offset from the over-specialization of his daily work, to supply him with general information and to insist that he shall be a cultivated member of society with a consciousness of his industrial and social value.
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