THE FRUITS OF MANUAL TRAINING. 351 



toil, stand up to their anvils with an unconscious earnestness which 

 shows how much they enjoy their work. What are they doing? 

 They are using brains and hands. They are studying definitions, 

 in the only dictionary which really defines the meaning of such words 

 as " iron," " steel," " welding," " tempering," " upsetting," " chilling," 

 etc. And, in the shop where metals are wrought cold (which, for 

 want of a better name, we call our machine-shop), every new exercise 

 is like a delightful trip into a new field of thought and investigation. 

 Every exercise, if properly conducted, is both mental and manual. 

 Every tool used and every process followed has its history, its genesis, 

 and its evolution. 



I have been speaking of the shops of the manual-training school, 

 not of the ordinary factory. In the latter everything is reduced as 

 much as possible to a dull routine. Intellectual life and activity are not 

 aimed at. The sole object of the factory is the production of articles 

 for the market. In a manual-training school, on the other hand, every- 

 thing is for the benefit of the boy ; he is the most important thing in 

 the shop ; he is the only article to he put upon the marJcet. No one 

 can learn from a book the true force of technical terms and definitions, 

 nor the properties of materials. All descriptive words and names 

 must base their meaning upon our own consciousness of the things 

 they signify. The obscurities of the text-books (often doubly ob- 

 scure from the lack of proper training on the part of the authors, who 

 describe processes they never tried, and objects they never saw) van- 

 ish before the steady gaze of a boy whose hands and eyes have assist- 

 ed in the building of mental images. 



Then, again, the habit of clear-headedness, of precision in regard 

 to the minor details of a subject, which is absolutely essential in the 

 shop — an exact and experimental knowledge of the full force of the 

 words and symbols used — stretches with its wholesome influence into 

 the study of words and the structure of language. As Felix Adler 

 says, the doing of one thing well is the beginning of doing all things 

 well. I am a thorough disbeliever in the doctrine that it is ever edu- 

 cationally useful to commit to memory words which are not under- 

 stood. The memory has its abundant uses, and should be carefully 

 cultivated ; but when it usurps the place of the understanding, whea 

 it beguiles the mind into the habit of accepting the images of words 

 for the images of the things the words stand for, then the memory 

 becomes a positive hindrance to intellectual development. 



" Manual training is essential to the right and full development of 

 the human mind, and therefore no less beneficial to those who are not 

 going to become artisans than to those who are. . . . The work- 

 shop method of instruction is of great educational value, for it brings 

 the learner face to face with the facts of nature ; his mind increases 

 in knowledge by direct personal experience with forms of matter and 

 manifestations of force. No mere words intervene. The manual ex- 



