iv.] SCIENTIFIC EDUCATION. 49 



011.&quot; I look upon it, that &quot;getting on&quot; is a very important 

 matter indeed. I do not mean merely for the sake of the coarse 

 and tangible results of success, but because humanity is so con 

 stituted that a vast number of us would never be impelled to 

 those stretches of exertion which make us wiser and more cap 

 able men, if it were not for the absolute necessity of putting on 

 our faculties all the strain they will bear, for the purpose of 

 &quot; getting on &quot; in the most practical sense. 



Now the value of a knowledge of physical science as a means 

 of getting on is indubitable. There are hardly any of our trades, 

 except the merely huckstering ones, in which some knowledge 

 of science may not be directly profitable to the pursuer of that 

 occupation. As industry attains higher stages of its develop 

 ment, as its processes become more complicated and refined, 

 and competition more keen, the sciences are dragged in, one 

 by one, to take their share in the fray ; and he who can best 

 avail himself of their help is the man who will come out upper 

 most in that struggle for existence, which goes on as fiercely 

 beneath the smooth surface of modern society, as among the wild 

 inhabitants of the woods. 



But in addition to the bearing of science on ordinary practical 

 life, let me direct your attention to its immense influence on several 

 of the professions. I ask any one who has adopted the calling 

 of an engineer, how much time he lost when he left school, be 

 cause he had to devote himself to pursuits which were abso 

 lutely novel and strange, and of which he had not obtained the 

 remotest conception from his instructors ? He had to familiar 

 ize himself with ideas of the course and powers of Nature, to 

 which his attention had never been directed during his school- 

 life, and to learn, for the first time, that a world of facts lies 

 outside and beyond the world of words. I appeal to those who 

 know what engineering is, to say how far I am right in respect to 

 that profession ; but with regard to another, of no less import 

 ance, I shall venture to speak of my own knowledge. There 

 is no one of us who may not at any moment be thrown, bound 

 hand and foot by physical incapacity, into the hands of a medical 



E 



