1907] Nature Study No. 40. 207 



NATURE STUDY, No. XL. 



MANUAL TRAINING THE MECHANICAL HOBBY. 



By Mark G. McElhinney, L.D.S., D.D.S., Ottawa. 



What appears to be a reasonable definition of the word 

 Hobby is, a pursuit followed for its own sake, a result of certain 

 mental activities requiring - expansion. Upon the ordinary pur- 

 suit become a hobby, there falls the spirit of art work for the 

 work's sake and the reward to the soul of the worker. To hob- 

 bies may be traced many great inventions and not a few of out 

 most useful institutions. The very use of the term as indicating 

 an enthusiastic devotion to one subject instead of a perfunctory 

 performance of daily duty is a keynote to the whole subject. It is 

 only when a pursuit becomes a hobby that it develops beyond the 

 level of mediocrity. There is nothing to prevent one's hobby and 

 one's vocation from being identical, or to their running on parallel 

 lines. Happy is he whose vocation and hobby are inter-relative, 

 because knowledge gained in one may be applied to the better- 

 ment of the other. Every successful man has his hobby ; the in- 

 dividual that cannot become enthusiastic on some one subject in 

 life is never likely to rise above the average in anything. Even 

 the enthusiasm apparently wasted in a thoroughly unpractical 

 hobby is not really lost, for the data accumulated in its cause may 

 become available for many purposes. The introduction of Manual 

 Training to our educational system is a happy indication that we 

 are awaking to the fact that our methods in the past have been one- 

 sided. The old methods overlooked one of the most important of 

 faculties, that which contains the incentive to do things. It is 

 good to know things it is better to be able to do things. While 

 to know may produce a useless pedant to be able to do develops 

 a thinking and self-reliant character. 



Under our methods of education, manual labour has fallen 

 somewhat into disrepute. There has been too great a rush into 

 professional and commercial life, because, to put it plainly, the 

 trades are not considered so respectable, and the greatest ambi. 



