AND THE MODE OF TEACHING THEM. 449 



truth. "We fully admit that no perfect knowledge, in any art, can 

 be communicated by oral teaching alone ; that the mechanical 

 engineer, the mining engineer, the civil engineer, and the archi- 

 tect, must not only see the processes of their respective arts, but 

 also exercise themselves in them, before they are competent to con- 

 duct them on their own responsibility. But is this any reason 

 why the principles of these several arts should not be taught sys- 

 tematically ? As well might the physician say " Away with 

 your schools of medicine! let the student accompany me to the 

 hospital ; he will see there the disease and the remedy in juxtaposi- 

 tion ; he will observe the malady and the cure ; and he may turn 

 his back for ever on the lecture-room." Would reasoning such as 

 this be listened to, in a profession already acquainted with better 

 modes of teaching, teaching in which the principles and the 

 practice are mingled in due proportion ? And yet, is not this the 

 very argument of those who ignorantly cry up practice, in opposi- 

 tion as if it were in opposition to theory ? No ! a wise teach- 

 ing will give practice practice, without which there can be no 

 skill : but it will not fail to base practical knowledge upon a know- 

 ledge of principles, without which all skill is but the blind per- 

 formance of a task, as senseless and soulless as that of the engine 

 in its routine of toil. 



The extremes of opinion on this question are exemplified in 

 the widely different states of the engineer profession itself in 

 England and in France. Up to the present day, the education of 

 the engineer student in the latter country has been too merely 

 theoretical; while in the former, practice has been insisted on, 

 almost to the exclusion of theoretical knowledge. The Poly- 

 technic School of France, the school in which the young engineer 

 commences his education, though perhaps the first school of pure 

 science in the world, is decidedly too abstract in the character of 

 its studies, to satisfy the wants of the professional student. And 

 though, after two years of preparation there, he is transferred to 

 the School of Mines, the Naval School, or the School of Roads and 

 Bridges, notwithstanding this apparently excellent arrangement 

 for imparting special, as well as general information, it is found, 

 in the end, that his practical acquirements have not kept pace with 

 his theoretical knowledge. In England, on the other hand, the 

 student enters the office of the professional engineer, whom he 

 accompanies in the execution of his public duties. He thus 



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