TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION G. 753 



open a very much wider field from which the engineer may, as opportunity offers, 

 increase his knowledge and practice in the future, but because many of such sub- 

 jects are inseparable from an intelligent understanding of almost any great 

 engineering work. ' Nothing so difficult as a beginning ' may be a proverb of 

 rather too far-reaching a nature, but it contains the suggestion of a great truth, 

 increasing in weight as we grow older, and the beginnings of such coUateral 

 sciences should therefore find a place in every engineering student's store of early 

 knowledge. 



But after all, when these things have been done in the best manner — when the 

 scientific and practical training of the engineering student has been all that can be 

 desired, it is a matter of general experience among engineers who have closely 

 watched the rising generation that the most successful men in after life are not 

 produced exclusively from the ranks of those whose college coui'se has been most 

 successful. No doubt such men have on the average been nearer the top than the 

 bottom, but it is an undoubted fact that when we class them according to their 

 earlier successes or failures we find the most remarkable disparities. We find 

 many who in academic days gave but little promise, and we miss large numbers 

 who promised great things. These facts are not confined to the profession of the 

 engineer, but they seem to me to be accentuated in that profession. We shall no 

 doubt be right in attributing the disparity to diSerences of mental temperament 

 and of opportunity ; but does it follow tliat there are no faculties which may be 

 cultivated to reduce the effect of such differences ? I venture to think there are. 

 I will instance only one, but perhaps the most important of such faculties, and which 

 in my experience among young engineers is exceptionally rare. I refer to the power 

 of marshalling facts, and so thinking:, or speaking, or writing of them that each 

 maintains its due significance and value. 



In the minds of many young engineers exceptional mathematical powers often 

 have the effect of making it extremelv difficult to avoid spending an amount of time 

 upon some issues out of all proportion to their importance ; while other issues 

 which do not readily lend themselves to mathematical treatment, but which are 

 many times more important, are taken for granted upon utterly insufficient data, 

 and chiefly because they cannot be treated by any process of calculation. I 

 believe that nothing but well-directed observation and long experience can enable 

 one to assign to each part of a large engineering problem its due importance ; 

 but much may be done in early training also, and I think ought to be done, 

 to lead the mind in broader lines, to accustom it to look all round the problem, 

 and to control the imagination or the natural predilection for one phase from 

 disguising the real importance of others. In the practical design and execution of 

 important works the man will sooner or later be recognised who has the power so 

 to formulate his knowledge, and on the same principles has succeeded in so 

 marshalling and expressing his thoughts, as to convey to those by whom he is 

 employed just so much as may be necessary and proper for their use. 



Such considerations are not, it is true, a branch of mechanical science, but 

 being essentially important to the attainment of maximum usefulness iu the 

 application of any science to the various branches of engineering which are the 

 chief ends and aims of mechanical science, they are, I think, worthy of mention 

 from this chair. 



In proportion as the engineer possesses and exercises such powers he will avoid 

 those innumerable pitfalls to which imperfectly instructed ingenuity is so particu- 

 larly liable, and to which the Patent Office is so sad a witness ; and in the same 

 proportion must always be the useful outcome of the great schools of science 

 which hava become so striking a feature of the later Victorian age. 



In relation to the results of applied science, I have spoken only of the steam- 

 ship ; add the telegraph, and I think we have the most important tools by which 

 the present conditions of modern civilisation have been rendered possible. And 

 more than this, I think we have, in the lessening of space, and the facility for 

 intercourse they give, the chief secret of that marvellous development of the 

 empire which this year has so pleasantly and so memorably signalised. Is ' Our 



1897. ' 3 c 



