PROCEEDINGS OF THE POLYTECHNIC ASSOCIATION. 959 



description which he h;is never seen before ; but to a young lad, 

 whose observant powers are in the morning of their development, 

 and who possesses the lively impressibility belonging to that early 

 age, such a visit is a- source of delight beyond all measure, and 

 it is often found almost impossible to tear him away from objects 

 which so fill him with admiration and gratify his desire to know. 



If it were proper here to refer to matters of personal history, 

 in illustration of what I have asserted of the fitness of the sciences 

 of nature to occupy the place of precedence in an educational 

 system founded upon that sound philosophy which consults first 

 the demands of nature, I wonld say that the point of my own life 

 to whioh, at a distance of more than forty years, I look back as 

 that in which my education truly began, was that at which, while 

 engaged in the irksome study of the dead languages, which, for 

 the seven years preceding my admission to college, crushed me 

 down like an incubus, I had an opportunity to attend a course of 

 lectures on chemistrj'', magnetism and electricity by an itinerant 

 lecturer. It seemed tome that a new world had suddenly been 

 revealed to me. From that time forward I could think of nothing 

 else. It was my constant amusement, Avith such rude materials as 

 I could gather, to repeat the experiments which I had seen, and 

 to endeavor to devise new ones. Cut off from books of my own 

 on those subjects, I improved my time during the holidays which 

 permitted me to visit home, in devouring the text books of a sister, 

 who being superior to me in age, was pursuing in her own school, 

 subjects which, according to the received theory, are more advanced 

 than those then allowed to me — that is to say, the dead languages. 

 In assuming, therefore, that those subjects are the subjects best 

 suited to early mental culture, I do not merely put forth opinions 

 founded on considerations a 'priori, I speak with the conviction 

 which results from actual experience. 



But these subjects are recommended not only on educational 

 gi-ounds, but because they embody in themselves a vast amount 

 of substantial knowledge, such as cannot fail to be of the hishest 

 practical usefulness in life. They relate to the real and material 

 world by which man is surrounded, and in the midst of which he 

 lives. Whatever may be the value of the study of the classics 

 in a subjective point of view, nothing could possibly more 

 thoroughly unfit a man for any immediate usefulness in this matter 

 of fact world, or make him more completely a stranger in his own 

 home, than the purely classical education which used recently to 



