PREJUDICE AGAINST INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS. 217 



art, the practice at all events, and let principles take care of them- 

 selves, they say. I said to a lawyer of a growing practice in one 

 of our cities, you took a course in a law school ? Yes, he replied, 

 but I would not do it again, had I my law education to seek. It 

 is a long way into the practice, and those who passed into the 

 business through the simple training of a law office find them- 

 selves ahead. A professor of chemistry, a friend of mine, visited 

 a soda factory in the West, and was received by the proprietor 

 with the announcement that chemists were of no use to the world. 

 But scientific schools are founded on the principle of faith in the 

 utility of science. Nothing is more useful than pure science. No 

 one knows where it will reveal its utility. Because Galvani 

 played with the leg of a frog we have the electric telegraph ; and 

 because others have watched the sands upon a plate above sound- 

 ing strings, we can send music from Detroit to Chicago, and are 

 like to be able to send several messages at once over the same 

 wire. Hooke was ridiculed for his ' swing-swangs,' but the pen- 

 dulum clock is the result of his experiments. It is to persons 

 deeply versed in the principles of things, that we owe our great 

 inventions. Lawyer Tull, returning to England after travel for 

 his health, invents the seed drill, and when its introducer into the 

 United States wished to simplify it he applied to the President of 

 Yale college, whose mathematical genius sufficed for the task. 

 Rev. Patrick Bell invented the mower ; Whitney, a college grad- 

 uate, the cotton gin ; and so on through a large part of the cata- 

 logue of inventions. But it is uo part of my purpose to vindicate 

 the practical nature of science. " To a sound mind," says Emer- 

 son, " the most abstract truth is the most practical." 



Science in the Course of Study. What should the schools do ? 

 Some are disposed to say. Give us practical manual training first, 

 then, if time admits, go deeper. But the general opinion of educa- 

 tors is, give us the underlying principles thoroughly, and skill will 

 add itself to knowledge with great rapidity. The accomplished 

 mariner, engineer, builder, know the principles of their business. 

 DiflBculties that are insurmountable to the man of mere practice, 

 give way readily to the man who joins a knowledge of principles 

 to his practical skill. Burke pointed out, in his delineation of the 

 character of Lord Grenville, the helplessness of a man of mere 

 ofiice training, in the perplexing circumstances \Njhere no prece- 

 dents exist for him to follow. 



