498 State Board of Agriculture, &c. 



in their professions ; but this honor yet remains to be for 

 the first time conferred upon a physician, because physicians 

 degrade science and scholarship by applying it to practical 

 use, and actuall}'- doing something — though it be only for 

 the relief of suffering humanity — actually doing something 

 with their hands I For this they are declared unfit to stand 

 upon an equality in life with clergymen, lawyers and pro- 

 fessors. , 



In a modified and softened form, it is true, but still 

 potent for evil to a fearful extent, the spirit of those old 

 times has come down to us of to-day, and dominates in our 

 higher institutions of learning, and dictates the methods of 

 teaching in our common schools. It persistently divorces- 

 learning from art, and teaches everything abstractly, with- 

 out showing its relation to use. The result is a general 

 ignoran(te among the pupils of this system, from the high- 

 est to the lowest, of the practical bearing of what they learn. 

 And the consequence is that they learn with difficulty, and 

 forget almost as fast as they learn, what is taught them with 

 so much pains, and at so great an expense of time and 

 money. We all know from daily experience that nothing 

 fixes a fact in the mind like seeing it applied in practice. 

 Many can learn in no other way, though they may have 

 great natural powers of mind ; and so we often see the 

 dunces of our schools and colleges among the foremost of 

 men in the practical affairs of life. Schools were of no ser- 

 vice to them, but that is the fault of the schools, and of the 

 system upon which their method of imparting instruction is 

 founded. 



This great and baneful defect in our common schools, this 



