July 8, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



39 



ing practise, an interested public has the 

 right to demand training in fundamentals 

 and the elimination of ephemeral details 

 that constitute a current art and not a 

 body of permanent principles. The older 

 culture course has its humanistic studies, 

 consecrated by centuries of use, and a body 

 of trained experts as teachers, who are not 

 often drafted from institutions of learning 

 by the superior rewards of professional 

 life. Pure science also has its settled sub- 

 jects of study — its languages, its higher 

 mathematics and its circle of related sci- 

 ences. Then too the scientific worker who 

 has insight and becomes a discoverer en- 

 joys a superlative satisfaction denied to 

 men who never add to the sum of human 

 knowledge as the results of research. 



In contrast with these old-established 

 courses, those in engineering are still inde- 

 terminate and lack a certain coherence 

 which is the product of age. Shop work 

 has too often been exalted above language, 

 and laboratories have been established in 

 imitation of a factory or a central power 

 station. The fundamentals for general 

 culture have been pushed aside by the on- 

 rush of machinery, and a young graduate 

 must be able to run a steam engine and 

 take an indicator card, even though he can 

 not write a straight English sentence or 

 dictate a business letter worthy to go on a 

 post card. 



Too much stress can hardly be placed on 

 the necessity of thorough instruction in 

 English. It is a common impression 

 among the young that the study of one's 

 mother tongue is a waste of time. There 

 never was a greater fallacy. Psychologists 

 tell us that a speech center has to be 

 formed and developed in the brain. So 

 far is human speech from being intuitive 

 and automatic that we acquire it only by 

 continuous and incessant effort. There is 

 no tool used by the human mind requiring 



more polishing and taking a finer finish. 

 Language is not an inheritance, but an 

 acquisition. It may resemble on the one 

 hand the crude spears or assegai of the 

 South African Kaffirs, or on the other the 

 flexible incisiveness of a polished Damascus 

 blade. Americas college students have less 

 facility in the use of idiomatic English 

 than have students of the same age in the 

 English universities. When one listens to 

 the limpid and expressive English of an 

 Oxford senior, and notes his large vocab- 

 ulary and his facile use of it, as compared 

 with the senior in an American college, one 

 is prepared to admit the propriety of the 

 distinction often drawn on the continent 

 between English and American. 



The engineering student should have 

 sufficient acquaintance with the best mas- 

 terpieces in English to give him a taste for 

 the highest types of English prose, and 

 enough practise in writing themes to secure 

 for himself a clear and expressive style of 

 composition. 



The opinion of eminent engineers on the 

 pressing need of a better use of English 

 on the part of members of their profession 

 is the best evidence of the neglect of in- 

 struction in English in engineering courses 

 in the past. The acquisition of a clear, 

 terse style is urged by them on the ground 

 that an important feature of the modern 

 engineer's duties is to make reports on 

 various phases of engineering under- 

 takings. These reports are an index of 

 the man, and if they are defective in form 

 or finish, the natural conclusion is that he 

 is also deficient as an engineer. 



It is scarcely necessary to insist on thor- 

 ough courses in physics and mathematics 

 as fundamental subjects for all engineers, 

 though the former has often been pushed 

 aside, with barely time enough for instruc- 

 tion in the merest elements of the subject, 

 notwithstanding the fact that engineering 



