PROFESSORS AND PRACTICAL MEN 29 
compounded of energy, shrewdness, enterprise, determination, 
sense of the fitness of things, and knowledge of the intuitive 
kind. Who does not know the man who, somehow or other, 
can get hold of the right thing ; knows a good thing when he 
sees it; has an unerring sense of a wrong thing; knows when 
and where to buy a thing, when and where to sell a thing— 
who, in short, does not know a good craftsman; and where in 
the world will you find a better than in England? I honestly 
believe—nowhere. And yet it may be said that a man who 
is this and no more than this, is but a serviceable savage. I 
do not agree. He is a man who has developed one set of 
faculties ; but it is a set by no means to be disparaged, by no 
neglect to be allowed to rust. I honour the man in his work- 
shop who can tell by the look, the feel, the sense of a thing, 
what it is good for, as well as I can tell by the light of science 
from the intellectual eminence of a university. For I know 
that if he is really first-rate in his way, he can assess the value 
of things for which my science has yet no touchstone. It will 
be, I dare say, many a long day before an epicure can choose 
his vintage by chemical analysis; it will certainly be long before 
science can fully supplant the finely cultivated instinct of the © 
true practical man. 
I trust, therefore, gentlemen, that if I,a mere man of science, 
take upon myself to talk to you about education in relation to 
your own pursuits, I do not neglect that vastly important 
element of education, that development of mother wit, which 
comes to man as he fulfils his appointed task of wrestling in 
the world with men and things for his survival among the 
fittest. I am not going to emulate the action of a learned 
acquaintance of mine, who has recently taken upon himself to 
lecture the pioneers of aviation, because they have not delayed 
their heroic enterprise until the mathematicians have discovered 
the true theory of stability. Scientific men of this kind, if 
they had their way, seem to me most likely to achieve the 
