546 TECHNOLOGY 



understood by technology, and is all that is directly included in its 

 definition as the science of the industrial arts. This scientific instruc- 

 tion in the industrial arts may be said to have been the beginning of 

 technology, and where it has been over-emphasized, it has given 

 apparent justification to the idea (of which there is still a survival) 

 that the subject is not necessarily scientific in any wide sense, and 

 that the practical training of workers is more important than the 

 theoretical. 



Technology may be called the child of science on the one hand, 

 and of industrial progress on the other; therefore we must not be 

 surprised to find a very curious blending of the spirit of both in 

 an institute of technology. 



We can do exactly the same thing at different times with a different, 

 even with an opposite motive, but though the same thing is pro- 

 duced externally, the result on the mind of the student is, in each 

 case, the result of the inner motive. What happens depends, as it 

 were, on the point upon which the stress is laid. Wherever the 

 spirit of science prevails, we are on the lookout for phenomena which 

 may lead us to a better understanding of a known law, or to a know- 

 ledge of some hitherto unknown law of nature. Wherever the spirit 

 merely of industrial progress prevails, we are on the lookout for 

 some adaptations of our machines or processes which may add to 

 the chances of commercial advantage. In the former case, while we 

 learn the best, because the scientific, method of carrying out an art, 

 we put at the same time the real emphasis on producing the scien- 

 tific man. In the latter case you produce merely an intelligent 

 handicraftsman, whose very highest aim is to improve his art - - by 

 no means an ignoble end, but one which might easily be ennobled, 

 and one which may and often does defeat its own purpose for the 

 true scientific spirit is also a spirit of prophecy, and if you do not 

 succeed in producing it, those things which might have been to you a 

 new revelation will lie by your side unperceived. Merz likens Bacon 

 to "one who inspects a large and newly discovered land, laying plans 

 for the development of its resources and the gathering of its riches." 



In the fact of scientific foresight is found a strong practical argu- 

 ment for curbing the impatience to acquire the training requisite 

 for success in a practical profession the readiness to sacrifice a 

 more remote to a more immediate end. This impatience is still so 

 great as to cause a serious danger that our technical schools may 

 be tempted to give a purely professional training, or that profes- 

 sionalism may become overwhelmingly strong in them, and threatens 

 to introduce, into even our common schools, a far too soon begun 

 specialization. 



That this danger exists is one reason why it is true, and prob- 

 ably always will be, that the scientific spirit is relatively more often 



