57 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



now. We take the greatest interest in their pursuits; we are edified 

 by their histories and are charmed with their poems, whicli some- 

 times illustrate so remarkably the powers of man's imagination ; some 

 of us admire and even humbly try to follow them in their high philo- 

 sophical excursions, though we know the risk of being snubbed by the 

 inquiry whether groveling dissectors of monkeys and black-beetles 

 can hope to enter into the empyreal kingdom of speculation. But still 

 we feel that our business is different: humbler if you will, though the 

 diminution of dignity is, perhaps, compensated by the increase of 

 reality ; and that we, like you, have to get our work done in a region 

 where little avails, if the power of dealing with practical, tangible 

 facts is wanting. You know that clever talk touching joinery will 

 not make a chair; and I know that it is of about as much value in the 

 physical sciences. Mother Nature is serenely obdurate to honeyed 

 words ; only those who understand the ways of things, and can silently 

 and effectually handle them, get any good out of her. 



And now, having, as I hope, justified my assumption of a place 

 among handicraftsmen, and put myself right with you as to my quali- 

 fication, from practical knowledge, to speak about technical education, 

 I will proceed to put before you the results of my experience as a 

 teacher of a handicraft, and tell you what sort of education I should 

 think best adapted for a boy whom one wanted to make a professional 

 anatomist. 



I should say, in the first place, let him have a good English element- 

 ary education. I do not mean that he shall be able to pass in such 

 and such a standard that may or may not be an equivalent expres- 

 sion but that his teaching shall have been such as to have given him 

 command of the common implements of learning and created a desire 

 for the things of the understanding. 



Further, I should like him to know the elements of physical sci- 

 ence, and especially of physics and chemistry, and I should take care 

 that this elementary knowledge was real. I should like my aspirant 

 to be able to read a scientific treatise in Latin, French, or German, 

 because an enormous amount of anatomical knowledge is locked up in 

 those languages. And especially I should require some ability to draw 

 I do not mean artistically, for that is a gift which may be cultivated 

 but cannot be learned, but with fair accuracy. I will not say that 

 everybody can learn even this; for the negative development of the 

 faculty of drawing in some people is almost miraculous. Still every- 

 body, or almost everybody, can learn to write; and, as writing is a 

 kind of drawing, I suppose that the majority of the people who say 

 they cannot draw, and give copious evidence of the accuracy of their 

 assertion, could draw, after a fashion, if they tried. And that " after 

 a fashion " would be better than nothing for my purposes. 



Above all things, let my imaginary pupil have preserved the 



