22$ VHAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



can say what intellectual Samsons are at the present 

 moment toiling with closed eyes in the mills and forges of 

 Manchester and Birmingham? Grant these Samsons 

 sight, and you multiply the chances of discovery, and with 

 them the prospects of national advancement. In our 

 multitudinous technical operations we are constantly play- 

 ing with forces our ignorance of which is often the cause 

 of our destruction. There are agencies at work in a 

 locomotive of which the maker of it probably never 

 dreamed, but which nevertheless may be sufficient to con- 

 vert it into an engine of death. When we reflect on the 

 intellectual condition of the people who work in our coal 

 mines, those terrific explosions which occur from time to 

 time need not astonish us. If these men possessed suf- 

 ficient physical knowledge, from the operatives themselves 

 would probably emanate a system by which these shocking 

 accidents might be avoided. Possessed of the knowledge, 

 their personal interests would furnish the necessary 

 stimulus to its practical application, and thus two ends 

 would be served at the same time the elevation of the 

 men and the diminution of the calamity. 



Before the present Course of Lectures was publicly an- 

 nounced, I had many misgivings as to the propriety of my 

 taking a part in them, thinking that my place might be 

 better filled by an older and more experienced man. To 

 my experience, however, such as it was, I resolved to 

 adhere, and I have therefore described things as they re- 

 vealed themselves to my own eyes, and have been enacted 

 in my own limite.d practice. There is one mind common 

 to us all; and the true expression of this mind, even in 

 small particulars, will attest itself by the response which it 

 calls forth in the convictions of my hearers. I ask your 

 permission to proceed a little further in this fashion, and 

 to refer to a fact or two in addition to those already cited, 

 which presented themselves to my notice during my brief 

 career as a teacher in the college already alluded to. The 

 facts, though extremely humble, and deviating in some 

 slight degree from the strict subject of the present dis- 

 course, may yet serve to illustrate an educational principle. 



One of the duties which fell to my share was the in- 

 struction of a class in mathematics, and I usually found 

 that Euclid and the ancient geometry generally, when 

 properly and sympathetically addressed to the understand- 



