254 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



THE ENGINEERING MIND. 



By J. C. SUTHERLAND, 



RICHMOND, QUE., CANADA. 



I 



N a fragment of autobiography written some years before his death, 

 Mr. Huxley said: 



But, though the Institute of Mechanical Engineers would certainly not own 

 me, I am not sure that I have not all along been a sort of mechanical engi- 

 neer in partibus infidelium. I am now occasionally horrified to think how very 

 little I ever knew or cared about medicine as the art of healing. The only 

 part of my professional course which really and deeply interested me was 

 physiology, which is the mechanical engineering of living machines; and 

 notwithstanding that natural science has been my proper business, I am 

 afraid there is very little of the genuine naturalist in me. I never collected 

 anything, and species work was always a burden to me; what I cared for 

 was the architectural and engineering part of the business, the working out 

 the wonderful unity of plan in the thousands and thousands of diverse living 

 constructions, and the modifications of similar apparatuses to serve diverse ends. 



Those who have read, however, the intensely interesting 'Life and 

 Letters' of Huxley by his son, will recall that at the very close of his 

 career, when driven to the continent in search of health, he took to 

 collecting gentians and determining their species, with great en- 

 thusiasm. The physical enjoyments of the search, as well as the 

 pleasure of recognizing each new species that he ran across, were 

 doubtless added to the more direct pleasure he derived from observing 

 the distribution of the genus and the adaptations that the different 

 species had undergone. 



At the same time, Huxley's analysis of the foundation of his 

 intellectual pleasure serves to indicate a special 'note' of modern cul- 

 ture; or rather that part of modern culture which has been most 

 profoundly affected by scientific thought. The age, at its best, is 

 the age of the engineering mind. By this is not meant merely that 

 it is an age of vast engineering feats and of a remarkable develop- 

 ment of the engineering profession, but that a distinct habit of 

 thought which may be called both with convenience and propriety the 

 ' engineering mind, ' is deeply influencing modern culture and is steadily 

 preparing the way for the realization of a better ideal in popular 

 education. The capable engineer computing to a nicety the elements 

 of his bridge structure, the botanist studying the wonderful mechanism 

 for the dispersal of seeds on the withered autumn weeds, the captain 



