274 TH E ADDRESSES, LECTURES, ETC., OF 



on hitherto as professional or trade knowledge to be acquired 

 during lengthy periods of pupilage or apprenticeship. 



The more ardent advocates of the Continental method of tech- 

 nical education go so far as to think that the irksome system of 

 apprenticeship should give way entirely to technical teaching 

 within the college walls, whereby it is assumed that much time 

 could be saved and a better knowledge be imparted. Having had 

 some experience of young men brought up at these technical 

 schools, I am bound to say that I have not been favourably im- 

 pressed with the results produced by that system. The practical 

 knowledge acquired at those establishments is wanting in what 

 may be called the commercial element, that is of due regard to 

 cost of production, of which the teacher himself must be com- 

 paratively ignorant, as otherwise we should probably find him 

 employed at the factory or the engineer's office, instead of in the 

 schoolroom. 



The young polytechnic student is apt to look on the machine or 

 process which he has studied, not as one of many solutions of a 

 practical problem influenced by ever-varying external circum- 

 stances, but as something representing an absolute condition of 

 things almost as completely proved and established as a first 

 principle in nature, or a proposition of Euclid ; he is very 

 proud of this positive knowledge and impatient of any sugges- 

 tion aiming at the accomplishment of the same object by means 

 not sanctioned by his authoritative text-book. He is apt to 

 be a dogmatist, a splendid man for coming out first-class in a 

 competitive examination, and likely enough to make a good 

 official in a Government administration, but most unlikely to 

 venture for himself on such new embodiments of first principles 

 of nature as are essential to the accomplishment of improved 

 results, and as have animated our Watts, our Cromptons, our 

 Corts, and our Bessemers in enriching the world with new 

 processes. 



On the Continent, where the Governments themselves are largely 

 engaged in trade and enterprise, where railways, mines, and factories 

 are State establishments, it was necessary to create a large staff of 

 men educated to the point of being able to assume at once a posi- 

 tion of some authority in the ranks of rigid organisation, and such 

 men are provided by the polytechnic schools. Our Indian Govern- 



