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 



