TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION G. 713 



never thinks of them outside office hours. We know how his fond mother talks of 

 her son as an engineer who, with a little more family influence and personal favour, 

 and if there was not so much competition in the profession, would do so well. It 

 is true, family influence may perhaps get such a man a better position, but he will 

 never be an engineer. He is not fit even to be a hewer of wood and drawer of water 

 to engineers. Love for his profession keeps a man alive to its interests all his time, 

 although, of course, it does not prevent his taking an interest in all sorts of other 

 things as well ; but it is only a professional problem that warms him through with 

 enthu.siasm. 1 think we may assume that there never yet was an engineer worth 

 his salt who was not fond of engineering, and so I shall speak only of the educa- 

 tion of the young man who is likely to be fond of engineering. 



How are we to detect this fondness in a boy ? I think that if the general educa- 

 tion of all boys were of the rational kind which I shall presently describe, there 

 would be no great difficulty ; but as the present academic want of system is likely 

 to continue for some time, it is well to consider things as they are. Mistakes must 

 be made, and the parent who tries during the early years of his oftspring to find out 

 by crafty suggestion what line his son is likely to wish to follow will just as probably 

 do evil by commission as the utterly careless parent is likely to do evil by omission. 

 He is like the botanical enthusiast who digs up plants to see how they are getting 

 on. But in my experience the Anglo-Saxon boy can stand a very great deal of 

 mismanagement without permanent hurt, and it can do no kind of boy any very 

 great harm to try him on engineering for a while. Even R. L. Stevenson, whose 

 father seems to have been very persistent indeed in trying to make an engineer of 

 him against his will, does not seem, to a Philistine like myself, to have been really 

 hurt as a literary man through his attendance on Fleeming Jenkins' course at 

 Edinburgh^on the contrary, indeed. It may be prejudice, but I have always 

 felt that theTe is no great public person of whom I have ever read who would not 

 have benefited by the early training which is suitable for an engineer. I am glad 

 to see that Mr. Wells, whose literary fame, great as it is, is still on the increase, 

 distinguishes the salt of the earth or saviours of society from the degraded, use- 

 less, luxurious, pleasure-loving people doomed to the abyss by their having had 

 the training of engineers and by their possessing the engineer's methods of thinking. 



It may be that there are some boys of great genius to whom all physical 

 science or application of science is hateful. I have been told that this is so, and 

 if so I still think that only gross mismanagement of a youthful nature can have 

 produced such detestation. For such curious persons engineering experience is, of 

 course, quite unsuitable. 1 call them ' curious ' because every child's education in 

 very early years is one in the methods of the study of physical science ; it is 

 Nature's own method of training, which proceeds successiully until it is inter- 

 fered with by ignorant teachers who check all power of observation and the 

 natural desire of every boy to find out things for himself. If he asks a question, 

 he is snubbed ; if he observes Nature as a loving student, he is said to be lazy and 

 a dunce, and is punished as being neglectful of school work. Unprovided with 

 apparatus, he makes experiments in his own way, and he is said to be destructive 

 and full of mischief. But however much we try to make the wild ass submit to 

 bonds and the unicorn to abide by the crib, however bullied and beaten into the 

 average schoolboy type, I cannot imagine any healthy boy sufiering afterwards 

 by part of a course of study suitable for engineers, for all such study must follow 

 Nature's own system of observation and experiment. Well, whether or not a 

 mistake has been made, I shall assume the boy to be likely to love engineering, 

 and we have to consider how he ought to be prepared for his profession. 



I want to say at the outset that I usually care only to speak of the average 

 boy, the boy usually said to be stupid, ninety -five per cent, of all boys. Of the boy 

 said to be exceptionally clever I need not speak much. Even if he is pitchforked 

 into works immediately on leaving a bad school, it will not be long before he 

 chooses his own course of study and follows it, whatever course may have been 

 laid down for him by others. I recollect that when in 186.3 I attended an evening 

 class held in the Model School, Belfast, under the Science and Art Department, 

 on Practical Geometry and Mechanical Drawing, there was a young man attending 



