764 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XV. No. 385. 



all is seen in confusion ; time and acquaint- 

 ance must make conceptions clear and 

 familiar, conceptions and interpretations 

 of shade and perspective, before the science 

 of painting becomes comprehensible. Un- 

 stop deaf ears at seventeen, and not only 

 is a symphony of Beethoven absolutely 

 meaningless, but all sound fails to be inter- 

 preted. Only after time has supplied the 

 familiarity "vvith sound conceptions which 

 childhood should have given, only then can 

 the study of the principles of music be 

 begun. 



These cases thus support the contention 

 that familiarity vs^ith conceptions and con- 

 ditions, if not absolutely necessary to the 

 study of principles, is at least an invalu- 

 able, an incalculable aid. 



The student beginning the study of 

 metallurgy has something in common with 

 one who should begin the study of the sci- 

 ence of music immediately after the instan- 

 taneous cure of congenital deafness. As it 

 is hard for us to grasp our own infantile 

 difficulties in interpreting the sensations on 

 our retinas, so one who begins to teach 

 metallurgy late enough in life to have lost 

 sight of the mental condition of his stiident 

 days is at first puzzled by the density of 

 his pupils' ignorance. They lack the very 

 beginning of those every-day conceptions 

 so familiar to the teacher himself. To a 

 man from the moon the conception that 

 water runs down rather than up hill Avould 

 be novel. 



"Without conceptions of metallurgical 

 conditions and surroundings, your reason- 

 ing about metallurgical processes may 

 wring an acquiescence from the student's 

 intellect, but all remains unreal, unheld by 

 the memory, unimpressed, like a pale alge- 

 braic demonstration. 



Now I take it that the great object of 

 laboratory instruction is to supply lacking 

 conceptions. Though the youth has seen 

 chemical actions going on around him, his 



attention has not been sufficiently concen- 

 trated on their essential features. The 

 chemical laboratory reinforces his deficient 

 observation, and clarifies his hazy concep- 

 tions of gasification, sublimation, precipi- 

 tation, solution, fusion, liquefaction, solidi- 

 fication, freezing, diffusion, the exact 

 balancing of reaction, substitution, the in- 

 destructibility of matter. Beyond this it 

 impresses on his memory the chief charac- 

 teristics of the more important chemical 

 substances by vivid picture, and by per- 

 sonal acquaintance, instead of by mere 

 description from the lips or pen of teacher. 

 They become to him as liis playmates in the 

 fiesh, instead of as the heroes of his story 

 books. It is no just reproach to call this 

 kindergarten work; calling names is poor 

 argument. It does to the youth what the 

 kindergarten does to the little child, direct- 

 ing observation into fruitful fields. 



Why, now, have I said that the need of 

 laboratory instruction is even more press- 

 ing in case of metallurgy than in that of 

 chemistry or of physics^ Because the con- 

 ditions, especially the high temperature 

 conditions, which surround metallurgy are 

 stranger, less foreshadowed by childhood's 

 prior experience, less readily evolved 

 from our consciousness, less easily pic- 

 tured by the words of lecture or text- 

 book than those which attend chemistry 

 and physics as these are chiefly taught, the 

 chemistry and physics of the normal or 

 every-day temperature, that little range 

 betAveen the freezing and boiling points of 

 water. The conditions and phenomena even 

 of common-temperature chemistry and 

 physics indeed are relatively unfamiliar to 

 the beginner; tlois however is not so much 

 because they and their likes have not been 

 seen, as because attention has not been con- 

 centrated upon them. The pictures are 

 already in the memory, and respond readily 

 to developing and fixing by skilful lan- 

 guage. The daily ablutions teach the in- 



