368 BRAIN WORK AND 



who unconsciously thinks of it while stand- 

 ing by it, can really improve it. Smeaton and 

 Newcomen surely were excellent engineers ; but 

 in their engines a boy had to open the steam 

 valve at each stroke of the piston ; and it was 

 one of those boys who once managed to connect 

 the valve with the remainder of the machine, 

 so as to make it open automatically, while he 

 ran away to play with other boys. But in the 

 modern machinery there is no room left for 

 naive improvements of that kind. Scientific 

 education on a wide scale has become necessary 

 for further inventions, and that education is 

 refused to the workers. So that there is no 

 issue out of the difficulty, unless scientific educa- 

 tion and handicraft are combined together 

 unless integration of knowledge takes the place 

 of the present divisions." 



Such is the real substance of the present 

 movement hi favour of technical education. 

 But, instead of bringing to public consciousness 

 the, perhaps, unconscious motives of the present 

 discontent, instead of widening the views of the 

 discontented and discussing the problem to its 

 full extent, the mouthpieces of the movement 

 do not mostly rise above the shopkeeper's view 

 of the question. Some of them indulge in jingo 

 talk about crushing all foreign industries out of 

 competition, while the others see in technical 



