PREJUDICE AGAINST INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS. 209 



thirty thousand students, and Paris still more, Roger Bacon could 

 find but two good mathematicians in the world. 



Craik (English Literature, Vol. 1), says metaphysics and logic, 

 together witti divinity, — which was converted into little else than 

 a subject of metaphysical and logical contention, — so occupied 

 the crowd of intellectual inquirers, that except the professional 

 branches of law and medicine, scarcely any other studies were 

 attended to. Down from times when this was a true picture of its 

 educated men, our universities and colleges have come impressed 

 with no inconsiderable portion, so to speak, of the old neglect of 

 natural science. Great schools are conservative, and with a 

 haughty disdain of learning not imparted by themselves, they 

 adhere to their first definition of learning, and the veneration 

 every man pays to the institution where he took his degree, helps 

 to preserve the notion that there is but one way to the ranks of 

 the educated, and that is by the beaten track of a collegiate course 

 of Latin, Greek, and philosophy. It is an old saying, that pos- 

 session is nine points of the law. 



Discipline. It is said that scientific studies do not discipline 

 the mind. Sir William Uamilton thinks the physical sciences are 

 good for those dull alumni who are incapable of thought. — 

 (Discussions, Harper's Ed., p. 705). He and such as he, know 

 the educating effects of the studies they have themselves pursued, 

 but do not know the value of studies into the spirit of which they 

 have not entered. All things seem easy to him who has not tried 

 them, and every youth would drive the chariot of the sun if he 

 could. Science seems a mere committing of facts from a book, — 

 that is the idea these scholars have of it. Dr. Waylaud, formerly 

 of Kalamazoo, overheard a graduate expressing reget that he had 

 had but four weeks' study of geology. He heard his classical 

 friend, an able and well informed man, reply, " Well, I presume 

 that in that time you learned all that is to be known about 

 geology." 



An able educator once passed with me an hour in a class in 

 zoology, and on leaving remarked, " Do you call that education? 

 I," he said, " certainly do not." It seemed to him a tax on the 

 memory alone. There is a way, of course, to make any study a 

 process of memorizing. It is not confined to natural history. 

 Carlyle thus thunders his condemnation of the I'outine study of the 

 languages, in his Sartor Kesartus : " My teachers," said he, " were 



