Polytechnic Association. 861 



scientific principles are to be rendered available, and what phenomena 

 of nature are operating in the production of the power which he is 

 to seize upon and usefully to apply. Otherwise he will grope in the 

 dark, and will only learn, by the bitter experience ~of costly failures, 

 to make slow progress toward perfection. 



We have seen that the greatest improvements effected in the steam- 

 engine were due to the united engineering skill and experience, and 

 to the scientific attainments of James Watt. 



We saw that his improvements followed a long course of intelligent 

 and scientific research, and that, directed by the results of this inves- 

 tigation, the engineering talent and the mechanical knowledge of the 

 great inventor accomplished more in a single lifetime than had been 

 previously accomplished in the whole period embraced in the history 

 of civilization. 



This great example confirms what we should infer from the nature 

 of the problem itself, that he who would accomplish most in the pro- 

 fession of the mechanical engineer, must best combine scientific 

 attainments, especially experimental knowledge, with mechanical 

 tastes and ability and engineering experience. 



As one of our oldest engineers * tells him, he must " cultivate a 

 knowledge of physical laws, without which eminence in the profession 

 can never be securely attained." He must become familiar not only 

 with science and the arts, but he must train himself to make the one 

 assist the other ; he must learn just how to make use of scientific 

 principles in planning his work, and how to do his work most 

 thoroughly, efficiently and economically when he has determined his 

 general design. He must be able to determine how far standard 

 designs are in accordance with correct principles, to detect their defects 

 and to provide a remedy correct in principle and mechanically efficient. 

 Science and art must always work hand in hand. 



But how is the rising generation of engineers to acquire this pro- 

 ficiency in both branches of knowledge ? How are they to be made 

 mentally and manually accomplished ? How fitted for the great work 

 which is before them ? 



The time has gone by when, in any art, the ignorant and merely 

 dextrous workman can compete with even a less skillful shopmate, in 

 the race for preferment, where the latter possesses and uses brains as 

 well as hands, and knows how to make the one direct and aid the 

 other. We to-day find him occupying a decided vantage ground who 



* Charles Haswell. 



