626 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



engine of a species entirely imaginary one which it is impossible to 

 construct but very easy to understand," referring to Carnot's engine. 

 In like manner, if one would command confidence as a draughtsman he 

 must be a mechanic as well. And, finally, if I am a student of words 

 alone, and if I go not beyond my dictionaries, I shall never guess their 

 meaning. A large proportion of our emphatic words are technical ; 

 they belonged originally to some craft, and none but a craftsman 

 knows their exact meaning. President Eliot, of Harvard, once said 

 that the highest education was that which gave one the fullest and 

 most accurate use of his mother-tongue. I would modify the state- 

 ment, and claim that the highest and most liberal education is that 

 which, besides cultivating most fully the powers of thought, gives one 

 full command of all the arts of expression. 



I need not remark that many, perhaps most thoughts, do not adr 

 mit of concrete nor even of pictorial expression, as, for example, all 

 abstractions ; hence they suffer seriously from want of clearness. If 

 you have a clear thought on abstract matters you can never be sure 

 you have expressed it clearly. 



Before we devote ourselves exclusively to the arts of expression, 

 we must cultivate all the faculties and encourage the growth of thoughts 

 worthy of expression. The thought must precede its expression by 

 any method, and in the cultivation of the thinking mind the concrete 

 should precede the abstract. Give children clear and accurate thoughts 

 of real things, of the material w T orld we live in, of real plants and ani- 

 mals, of the laws of materials, of qualities and then of quantities, be- 

 fore you venture on the field of abstractions. Before you cultivate 

 the high arts, make sure of the low ones ; without them as a founda- 

 tion no superstructure of fine art can stand overnight. As Emerson 

 says (in " Man, the Reformer ") : " "We must have a basis for our 

 higher accomplishments, our delicate entertainments of poetry and 

 philosophy, in the work of our hands. We must have an antagonism 

 in the tough world for all the variety of our spiritual faculties, or they 

 will not be bom." 



A habit of clear thinking once formed will never leave us, however 

 abstract our investigations become ; while a habit of stopping short 

 with ill-defined results, of resting content with obscure and half-grown 

 mental images, a mental attitude of f ogginess, has a stultifying effect 

 which seriously dwarfs the mind. This is a most important subject, 

 but I have place for but a few words of exhortation. Give children 

 clear thoughts, and begin with the concrete. W r hen the mind is too 

 weary or too sick to clear up obscurities, it is time to seek rest and rec- 

 reation and fresh air. Beware of straining the powers of attention by 

 too much schooling ; beware of overtaxing the mind by too many and 

 too difficult subjects, and especially beware of poisoning the blood and 

 debilitating the brain by bad air. The fruit of any and all these evils 

 is mental as well as physical decrepitude. 



