392 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



more nearly. Based on actual experience, tlie methods now preva- 

 lent in sciences are inductive, and call for experimental work 

 as indispensable. Scientific knowledge of to-day may be said to 

 begin its inquiries with an experiment, and to prove the correct- 

 ness of its conclusions by another. A facility of manij)ulation, 

 therefore, the aptitude for laboratory work is all-important, and 

 this may be found by analysis not to be the result, as it is often 

 popularly accepted, of natural or inborn talent, etc., but to repre- 

 sent a special training, a special knowledge, thus : 



1. We expect a well-developed perceptive power in the senses, 

 delicacy of touch, a minutely trained eye, ear — yes, even nose. 



2. A steadiness of purpose, and a patience understood only by 

 those who have worked on the same problem repeatedly and un- 

 successfully, often for weeks, before they could obtain the desired 

 results. 



3. A synthetic initiative in putting things together, a labora- 

 tory intuition, so to speak, which, like any other intuition, merely 

 represents an unconscious storage of the data of numerous ante- 

 cedent trials and attempts. 



4. A knowledge of the nature of materials employed, say those 

 that we may justly call materials of construction. 



5. Knowledge of the elementary laws in sciences, some mechan- 

 ics, some chemistry, to be afterward supplemented by the ade- 

 quate systematic study of mathematics and the philosophical 

 analysis of theories. 



Such, in short, are the prerequisites for a modern scientific ap- 

 prenticeship, and such a preparatory training, both in knowledge 

 and manipulation or practical work, is expected to result from the 

 innovation recommended — the industrial training or the experi- 

 mental laboratory connected with every technical fitting-school. 



Within the writer's memory, instruction in sciences has been 

 entirely revolutionized in its methods. It was suffering from the 

 traditional scholasticism and its influence, modernized into that 

 terrible bugbear the classical languages. Definitions learned by 

 rote used to mark the first hard steps of the embryo engineer, geolo- 

 gist, or chemist, etc. Definitions numbered by the hundred then, 

 of which very few have withstood the test of time, most of them 

 having vanished with Torricelli's vacuum theory, etc. 



A boy might then have had all the qualifications that we 

 would look for to-day for a future scientist. He might have had 

 a deep interest in any mechanical contrivance — for instance, taken 

 watches apart and put them together, picked out all the needles 

 out of his mother's drawer with a magnet, have been enthusiastic 

 about a horse-power, say a thrashing-machine, or have successfully, 

 although with some slight mishap, tried the properties of gun- 

 powder, of sulphur, of phosphorus. The little fellow may have 



