TECHNICAL EDUCATION. 573 



freshness and vigor of youth in his mind as well as his body. The 

 educational abomination of desolation of the present day is the stim- 

 ulation of young people to work at high pressure by incessant com- 

 petitive examinations. Some Avise man (who probably was not an 

 early riser) has said of early risers in general, that they are conceited 

 all the forenoon and stupid all the afternoon. Now, whether this is 

 true of early risers in the common acceptation of the word or not, I 

 will not pretend to say; but it is too often true of the unhappy chil- 

 dren who are forced to rise too early in their classes. They are con- 

 ceited all the forenoon of life, and stupid all its afternoon. The vigor 

 and freshness, which should have been stored up for the purposes of 

 the hard struggle for existence in practical life, have been washed out 

 of them by precocious mental debauchery by book-gluttony and les- 

 son-bibbing. Their faculties are worn out by the strain put upon 

 their callow brains, and they are demoralized by worthless childish 

 triumphs before the real work of life begins. I have no compassion 

 for sloth, but youth has more need for intellectual rest than age; and 

 the cheerfulness, the tenacity of purpose, the power of work which 

 make many a successful man what he is, must often be placed to the 

 credit, not of his hours of industry, but to that of his liours of idle- 

 ness, in boyhood. Even the hardest worker of us all, if he has to deal 

 with anything above mere details, will do well, now and again, to let 

 his brain lie fallow for a space. The next crop of thought will cer- 

 tainly be all the fuller in the ear and the weeds fewer. 



This is the sort of education which I should like any one who was 

 going to devote himself to my handicraft to undergo. As to knowing 

 anything about anatomy itself, on the whole I would rather he left 

 that alone until he took it up seriously in my laboratory. It is hard 

 work enough to teach, and I should not like to have superadded to 

 that the possible need of unteaching. 



Well, but, you will say, this is Hamlet with the Prince of Den- 

 mark left out ; your " technical education " is simply a good education, 

 with more attention to physical science, to drawing, and to modern 

 languages, than is common, and there is nothing specially technical 

 about it. 



Exactly so ; that remark takes us straight to the heart of what I 

 have to say, which is, that, in my judgment, the preparatory educa- 

 tion of the handicraftsman ought to have nothing of what is ordinarily 

 understood by " technical" about it. 



The workshop is the only real school for a handicraft. The edu- 

 cation which precedes that of the workshop should be entirely devoted 

 to the strengthening of the body, the elevation of the moral faculties, 

 and the cultivation of the intelligence ; and especially to the imbuing 

 the mind with a broad and clear view of the laws of that natural world 

 with the components of which the handicraftsman will have to deal. 

 And the earlier the period of life at which the handicraftsman has to 



