762 



SCIENCE. 



LN. S. Vol. XVI. No. 411. 



self— and it is characteristic of engineers 

 that their professional education proceeds 

 throughout the whole of their lives. Per- 

 haps of no other men can this be said so 

 completely. To utilize the forces of na- 

 ture, to combat nature, to comprehend 

 nature as a child comprehends its mother, 

 this is the pleasure and the pain of the en- 

 gineer.* A mere scientific man analyzes 

 nature: takes a phenomenon, dissects it 

 into its simpler elements, and investigates 

 these elements separately in his laboratory. 

 The engineer cannot do this. He must 

 take nature as she is, in all her exaspera- 

 ting complexity. He must understand one 

 of natui'e's problems as a whole. He must 

 have all the knowledge of the scientific 

 man, and ever so much more. He uses the 

 methods of the scientific man, and adds to 

 them methods of his own. The name given 

 to these scientific methods of his own or 

 their results is sometimes ' common-sense,' 

 sometimes ' character,' or ' individuality,' 

 or ' faculty,' or ' business ability,' or ' in- 

 stinct.' They come to him through a very 

 wide experience of engineering processes, 

 of acquaintance with things and men. No 

 school or college can do more than prepare 

 a young man for this higher engineering 

 education which lasts through life. With- 

 out it a man follows only rule of thumb, 

 like a sheep following the bell-wether, or 

 else he lets his inventiveness or love of 

 theory act the tyrant. 



Wlien a man has become a great en- 

 gineer, and he is asked how it happened, 

 what his education has been, how young 

 engineers ought to be trained, as a rule it 



* Of all the unskilled labor of the present day, 

 surely that of the modern poet is the most gro- 

 tesque. How much more powerful and powerless 

 man seems to us now; how much more wonderful 

 is the universe than it was to the ancients! Yet 

 our too learned poets prefer to copy and recopy 

 the sentiments of the ancients rather than try 

 to see the romance which fills the lives of engi- 

 neers and scientific men with joy. 



is a question that he is least able to answer, 

 and yet it is a question that he is most 

 ready to answer. He sees that he bene- 

 fited greatly by overcoming certain difficul- 

 ties in his life; and forgetting that every 

 boy will have difficidties enough of his 

 own, forgetting that although a few diffi- 

 culties may be good for discipline, many 

 difficulties may be overwhelming, forget- 

 ting also that he himself is a very excep- 

 tional man, he insists iipon it that those 

 difficulties which were personal to himself 

 ought to be thrown in the path of every 

 boy. It often happens that he is a man 

 who is accustomed to think that early edu- 

 cation can only be given throtigh ancient 

 classics. He forgets the dullness, the weari- 

 ness of his school-days. Whatever pleasure 

 he had in youth— pleasure mainly due to 

 the fact that the average Anglo-Saxon boy 

 invents infinite ways of escaping school 

 drudgery— he somehow connects with the 

 fact that he had to learn classics. Being 

 an exceptional boy, he was not altogether 

 stupefied, and did not altogether lose his 

 natural inclination to know something of 

 his own language; and he is in the habit 

 of thinking that he learned English through 

 Latin, and that ancient classics are the 

 best mediums through which an English 

 boy can study anything.* The cleverest 

 men of our time have been brought up 

 on the classics, and so the engineer who 

 cannot even quote correctly a tag from 

 the Latin grammar, who never knew any- 

 thing of classic literature, insists upon it 

 that a classical education is essential for 

 all men. He forgets the weary hours he 

 spent getting off Eiiclid. and the relief it 

 was to escape from the class-room not quite 



* The very people who talk so much of learning 

 English through Latin neglect in the most curious 

 ways those Platt-Deutsch languages, Dutch and 

 Scandinavian, a knowledge of which is ten times 

 more valuable in the study of what is becoming 

 the speech of the world. And how they do scorn 

 Lowland Scotch! 



