PREJUDICE AGAINST INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS. 215 



by Modern Life." Its purpose is to recommend the study of 

 science, and yet its pages are full of arguments drawn from the 

 dignity of these objects of study, the true discipline the study 

 aifords, the deep pleasure it bestows. No one can say abstractly 

 whether Greek or chemistry will be of the most use to a young 

 man just entering upon a course of study, nor is there any reason 

 why those who are in one course should look down in the least 

 upon those in any other. Nor does one course any more than 

 another overlook the true disciplinary ends of study. 



The motives that operate to keep a person to a course of study 

 are seldom simple and one. They are oftener mixed and of varia- 

 ble strength. The expectation of greater power through the two 

 endowments of study, that is, through mental discipline, and 

 through knowledge, is one strong element in probably the larger 

 part of a body of students, and it is as honorable in the chemical 

 laboratory, or the agricultural school, as it is in him who takes a 

 literary and classical course that he may be the better speaker or 

 writer. One studies to be a more successful practitioner, another 

 to be a better engineer or farmer ; where is the odds as regards 

 the dignity of the motive ? Then there is the sense of the dignity 

 of our nature, and its obligation to know, and to develop within 

 itself beauty and power. There is the native curiosity of man out 

 of which comes philosophy and science, and which craves satis- 

 faction in the pursuit of truth, as much as taste and imagination 

 seek it in poems and marble. There is the desire to be useful, to 

 forward society in its comforts, in the dignity of its employments, 

 in its higher welfare. All these impulses find a fitting prepara- 

 tion in different lines of study ; with some in classical studies, in a 

 larger number in a knowledge of spoken languages and of the 

 sciences. The proper ground it seems to me was taken by the 

 eminent founder of Oornell University in his desire to spread his 

 table with the elements of all knowledge, and then to count none 

 of them common or unclean. There is no study which cannot be 

 narrowing if studied in a narrow spirit, none without such rela- 

 tionships as make it ennobling. To the lean mind the highest 

 truths of theology remain thin. Like the loan kine of the Nile, 

 the mere knowing faculties may feed upon the fat kine, and never 

 be the fuller. But to the generous mind all knowledge is sacred, 

 and so connected with other knowledge as virtually to be a center 

 of all truth. A Goethe can say of so meagre a thing as book- 

 keeping by double entry, that " it is amongst the finest inventions 



