November 8, 1900] 



NATURE 



43 



permeated by theory, whose theory is so much a part of his 

 tnental machinery that it is always ready for practical applica- 

 tion to any problem, he is the real engineer. But you must 

 not mistake me in this matter. Eighty per cent, of the men 

 who pass examinations in mathematics, mechanics and elec- 

 tricity have very little of this theory. Fifty per cent, of the 

 writers of letters in thie engineering journals in which mathe- 

 matical expressions occur have almost nothing of this theory 

 in their possession. It is unknown to foolish men. Books 

 alone, lectures alone, experiments alone, workshop experience 

 alone cannot teach this theory. The acumen of a Q.C. may 

 actually prevent a man from acquiring it. A man may have 

 much of this theory, although he may never have listened to 

 lectures, although he may dislike the sight of a mathematical 

 expression. I have known men who might be called illiterate 

 to possess much theory. I have known many men who might 

 be called good electricians who are almost wanting in the theory 

 necessary for the electrical engineer. 



I am speaking only of theory. Of the other qualifications 

 for an engineer I need not here speak ; they are present to the 

 minds of all of us. A man may have any amount of know- 

 ledge ; he may know how to apply his knowledge, and yet he 

 may not be able to apply the knowledge from a want of 

 engineering character. 



The engineer must be a real man ; he must possess in- 

 dividuality, the power to think for himself. He must not be 

 like a sheep, knowing only enough to follow the bell-wether. 

 Over and over again in the last thirty years have some of us 

 given our students much the same sort of advice that Baden- 

 Powell gives to scouts in that excellent little book of his. If 

 any of you have not read that book you ought to buy it at once, 

 and you will there find that if a man is to think for himself he 

 must possess all kinds of knowledge, he must be constantly 

 picking up new kinds of knowledge. 



Nobody can limit the value of any kind of knowledge, but 

 still one may say that certain things are probably more im- 

 portant than others. To gain what we call " theory " a good 

 general education is most helpful — mathematical knowledge is 

 very helpful ; laboratory and workshop experience are extremely 

 helpful. There is one qualification which the electrical engineer 

 must have and without which all other qualifications are useless, 

 and if a man has it no other qualification is supremely im- 

 portant, and this absolutely indispensable qualification is that 

 a man shall love to think about and work with electrical things. 

 He must like these, not because of the money he can make 

 through electrical contrivances, nor even, I think, because of 

 the name he may make before the world — this would be mere 

 liking or cupboard love which has no lasting quality. So long 

 as we have men in this country who have the true love for 

 scientific work of which I speak, so long shall we have a real 

 profession of electrical engineering, for such men are always 

 scheming new contrivances and improving old ones and utilising 

 the services of all helpful people, and especially of capitalists. 

 When we have reached a state in which nobody schemes new 

 things because the existing things are perfect there will no 

 longer be a profession of electrical engineering. Of all ideas 

 surely that of having reached perfection is most hateful : the 

 idea of exact knowledge, that nothing is unknown, that there is 

 no need for thought and therefore that to think for oneself is a 

 sin. 



And so, although we are all agreed that much standardisation 

 in our contrivances and methods is absolutely necessary for our 

 competition with other nations, we must follow the Americans in 

 this matter and take care that it does not destroy invention. Of 

 course when things are really standardised, when we have our 

 perfect Mauser rifle or dynamo or locomotive or traction engine 

 or electrically driven stamp mill, a Boer can buy or even manu- 

 facture them if he has money, and he can use them as well as, 

 or possibly better than, we can. But he is not an engineer. 

 He uses things after the engineer has done his work upon them. 

 A stoker, a common engine-driver, the guard of a train, these 

 are not engineers. You must have noticed that the American 

 engineers, who surely deserve the character of being practical 

 idealists above all other engineers, are the men who are most 

 imbued with notions of standardisation which lead to cheapness 

 of manufacture, and they are also the men most alive to the 

 necessity for occasional scrapping of types of machinery when 

 they become even a little antiquated. 



Our chiefs, the men who run us all, our real men at this Insti- 

 tution, may be called Practical Idealists. They have imagina- 



NO. 1 619, VOL. 63] 



lion and judgment and individuality. They have the imagina- 

 tion and enthusiasm of inventors, and yet they are more than 

 inventors, for they can estimate the worth of their own inventions 

 and control their imaginations. They are ready to receive all 

 new things, and yet they are not carried away. They are radicals 

 and yet they are conservatives. They have what Mrs. Beecher 

 Stowe called Faculty. 



A strong imagination well under control, surely it is the 

 greatest of mental gifts. I look round me and wonder how 

 many of us really have it ; and how many of us are only dull 

 music-hall loving men, who scorn novels and poetry, who live 

 utilitarian, material lives, whose aim is merely to mike money 

 through electricity, who love it not for its own self, who cherish 

 their " tuppeay-ha'penny- worth " of theory because it is 

 sufiicient for their immediate wants. Why, even the writers of 

 leading articles in the daily papers can talk of the wonders of 

 electricity and what may yet come to pass ; and yet we who 

 make machines and use them and switch the marvellous thing 

 on and off and take all sorts of liberties with it — we are like 

 Calibans oblivious of the wonders of the fairy isle — like soulless 

 priests making a living in the temple of Isis — like Aladdins who 

 rub our lamp only to get the necessaries of life. 



Twenty years ago some of us were laughed at for our 

 optimism, and yet everything that we declared then to be doable 

 has now actually been done by engineers, except the thing which 

 was then and is now declared to be the supremely important 

 thing, namely, the electric consumption of coal. We say now, 

 as we said then, "The applied science of the future lies 

 invisible and small in the operations of the men who work at 

 pure chemistry and physics." And think of the wonderfully 

 rapid rate at which laboratory discoveries have been made in 

 the last eleven years, and how as the years go on they become 

 more and more numerous ; and yet many of us plod along with 

 our work seeing no farther than our noses. A year is now more 

 pregnant with discovery than a hundred years u«ed to be, and 

 yet the protective stolidity of our ancestors is upon us and we 

 think of the latest discovery as if it were really the very last that 

 can be made. A thousand men are measuring and trying new 

 things in laboratories all over the world. Some of them plod- 

 ding and soulless ; others of them with imagination and clearness 

 of vision. Do you think that nothing is to come from all that 

 work? 



And is it not one of the most important functions of the 

 engineer to do as Mr. Marconi has done, to convince capitalists 

 ignorant of science that if the successful laboratory experiment 

 is tried on the large scale, it must also be successful ? And are 

 we going to leave all this pioneering work, with all its possi- 

 bilities of great gain, albeit with possible loss, to foreign 

 engineers, when in most cases the scientific discovery has been 

 made in England ? Are we so lacking in the hope and faith 

 which are born of imagination and science ? And must we in 

 the future, as in the past, have to rely upon the influx of the 

 clever foreigner like Sir William Siemens ? Must we. Boer- 

 like, always depend upon our Uitlander population, Fleming 

 and German, Hollander, Huguenot and Hebrew, for the 

 development of our natural resources ? 



Some of the best engineers I know are so exceptional that 

 one must class them with geniuses ; they have faculty and 

 character, and so they have become engineers, even under the 

 most unfavourable circumstances. They have passed through 

 ordinary schools and yet developed common sense. They were 

 pitchforked into practical work, and their liking for the work, 

 as well as some curious kind of instinct, led them to pick up all 

 sorts of knowledge, which have become part of their mental 

 machinery. They continue to pick up new kinds of knowledge 

 when these become necessary for their professional work. 

 Unfortunately, these men do not realise how exceptional they 

 are, and they advise boys to go direct from school into works. 

 They forget that the other 99 per cent, of men treated in the 

 same way as themselves can only become the hewers of wood 

 and drawers of water to real engineers. Treated in this way, 

 average boys are just like so many sheep : they learn just what 

 seems absolutely necessary and no more ; their acquaintance 

 with the scientific principles underlying their trade is a hand-to- 

 mouth knowledge, which becomes useless when their trade 

 undergoes development. 



In 1867 I was an apprentice, and when in the drawing office 

 and pattern shop I remember well how I was chaffed for study- 

 ing such a non-paying, non-practical subject as electricity. 

 When I published my first electrical paper in 1874 before the 



