76 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the most perfect form of mental representation wherever the shape, 

 position, and relations of object in space are concerned. It is of im- 

 portance in every handicraft and profession where design is required, 

 because workmen ought to visualize the whole of what they propose to 

 do before they take a tool in their hands. Thus, the village smith and 

 the carpenter, Avho are employed on odd jobs, require it no less for 

 their wojk than the mechanician, the engineer, and the architect. The 

 lady's-maid who arranges a new dress requires it for the same reason 

 as the decorator employed on a palace, or the agent who lays out great 

 estates. Strategists, artists of all denominations, physicists who con- 

 trive new experiments, and, in short, all who do not follow routine, 

 have need of it. The pleasure its use can afford is immense. I have 

 many correspondents who say that the delight of recalling beautiful 

 scenery and great works of art is the highest that they know. Our 

 bookish education tends unduly to repress this valuable gift of nature. 

 A faculty that is of importance in all technical and artistic occu- 

 pations, that gives accuracy to our perceptions, and justness to our 

 generalizations, is starved by disuse, instead of being cultivated in the 

 way that will bring most return. I believe that a serious study of the 

 best method of developing the faculty of visualizing is one of the 

 many pressing desideratam the new science of education. Fortnightly 

 Meview. 







HENRY AND FARADAY.* 



Bt Professor ALFRED M. MAYEK. 



MOST reluctantly do I here desist from citing further the works 

 of Henry. It is impossible to crowd into one brief hour the 

 thoughts which were his occupation during more than half a century. 

 I have at least endeavored to exhibit before you the more important 

 of the labors of his life. What shall we think of them ? Surely they 

 are on as high a plane as those of any of his contemporaries, and show 

 as much originality as theirs in their conception as much skill in their 

 execution. Yet it has been said that Henry was not a man of genius. 

 As I have not been able to find that the philosophers, who have the 

 special charge of giving from time to time definitions of genius, have 

 been able to come to any satisfactory conclusion among themselves, I 

 will leave their company, and, with your liberty, take my definition 

 from a book which, if Ave accredit Thackeray, is one of the very best, 

 if not the best, novel ever writ in English. After listening to this I 

 will allow you to form your own opinions as to whether Henry did or 

 did not possess genius : " By genius I would understand that power, 



* Extract from " Henry as a Discoverer," a paper read by Professor Mayer at the 

 recent Boston mectlns; of the American Scientific Association. 



