PROGRESS IN ENGINEERING 293 



his courses of study best to prepare him for the greatest use- 

 fulness and the highest possibilities. 



It must be borne in mind that an education is not a col- 

 lection of facts stored away, to be drawn upon as desired and 

 used as mere facts with no development or improvement, but 

 rather a condition of the mind which enables one to develop 

 systematically and symmetrically such problems and condi- 

 tions as may come before him for solution or investigation. 

 This, it seems, marks the distinction between a special and a 

 liberal education, the one giving a supply of facts and infor- 

 mation, the other teaching the student to use his own powers 

 of observation and judgment. It is Huxley who so well de- 

 fines the liberally educated man. He says: ''That man, I 

 think, has a liberal education whose body has been so trained 

 in youth that it is the ready servant of his will, and does with 

 ease and pleasure all that, as a mechanism, it is capable of; 

 whose intellect is a clear, cold logic engine, to be turned to any 

 kind of work and to spin the gossamers as well as forge the 

 anchors of the mind ; whose mind is stored with the knowledge 

 of the great fundamental truths of nature and of the laws of 

 her operations ; one who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and 

 fire, but whose passions have been trained to come to heel by 

 a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience; one who 

 has learned to love all beauty, whether of nature or of art, to 

 hate all vileness, and to esteem others as himself." 



This powerful description applies with equal force to the 

 engineer, the clergyman or the man of letters; and no one 

 aiming toward a life of great usefulness and power can ques- 

 tion the superior strength and nobility of him who is able to 

 follow such a course as shall develop, as completely as the 

 natural endowment of the individual will allow, the broad, 

 well balanced and liberally educated man. This broad, 

 hberal education produces a truer conception of the truth 

 of existing laws, the application of better judgment in thought 

 and a clearness of apprehension and comprehension not possi- 

 ble in the case of the recipient of a narrow special education. 



The engineer should be a man of large conceptions and 

 sound judgment, with a thorough knowledge of the truths of 

 nature and the ability to convert the results of her laws into 



