PROCEEDINGS OF THE POLYTECHNIC ASSOCIATION. 955 



raost difficult of processes — the purely synthetic. They follow- 

 up this species of study for several years. Few follow it cheer- 

 fully, for few follow it intelligently. Their progress is slow. 

 The average attainment at the end of three, four or more years is 

 far from being what it should be — far from wdiatit mio-htbe could 

 they have entered upon it with a proper preliminary training. 

 Yet we do not appreciate the insignificance of the result, l)ecause 

 the system itself has created a mean standard, according to which 

 our expectations are adjusted. 



They are then advanced to the college. The same subjects 

 occupy them here as before, Avith the addition mainly of mathe- 

 matics, logic and rhetoric, for two years longer; and then finally, 

 as they approach the close of their educational career, they are 

 for the first time introduced to the sciences of observation and 

 experiment. That is to say, m'c have inverted the natural order 

 just as completely as possi])le, placing those subjects which 

 address themselves to the faculties earliest awake, at the very 

 conclusion of the course. And this inveision of the order of 

 nature carries wnth it the unfortunate consequence that no satis- 

 factory knowledge is acquired at last, either of the sciences or of 

 the languages. A large portion of my own life has been devoted 

 to the teaching of physics. During all this time it has been mani- 

 fest to me that my classes have come to this part of their course 

 totally unpracticed how to observe. And it has seemed to me 

 that their perceptive faculties have been actually dwarfed by the 

 forced inaction to which they have been constrained during the 

 period most favorable to their cultivation. Thus it has happened 

 that the brief time which can only be given to these subjects in 

 the college course has been exhausted in the attempt to convey 

 such elementary notions as should have been familiar long before. 

 And the same observation has been made to me by other gentle- 

 men who are among the most skilled instructors in science that I 

 have ever known. If, then, I am asked if I would displace these 

 subjects from the position they occupy in the course of collegiate 

 instruction, I would answer, by no means. 'What I would desire 

 would be to secure such an early culture, and such an acquaint- 

 ance with the elements of science, that it might be permitted us 

 to give, at this more advanced period, such larger views and such 

 profounder applications of the principles of these sciences, that 

 the student might feel, in the end, that he had acquired some 



