Apeil 24, 1903.] 



SCIENCE. 



643 



The methods used at West Point and 

 Annapolis in training officers for the army 

 and navy, and the course of the graduates 

 after leaving those academies, fairly illus- 

 trate my point. It is there held that "a 

 man, to know how to teach another man to 

 pull a stroke oar, must get on the stroke 

 oar himself; to be safe as a quarter-deck 

 officer, to give orders for reefing a topsail 

 in a gale of wind, he must himself have 

 reefed a topsail in a wind. To know how 

 to tell a man to ease a weather sheet or to 

 work the gear of any part of a ship, he 

 must have had his practical experience on 

 that same gear. He can not instruct his 

 men properly, he can not command them 

 safely and efficiently, unless he has been 

 through three or four years of hard prac- 

 tical experience, hand in hand with the 

 men in the forecastle. The same thing is 

 true of engineering. No man is fitted to 

 be superintendent (or manager) of a road 

 or works, no man is capable of carrying on 

 large engineering operations until he has 

 had the practical experience which fits him 

 to pass judgment upon what will be the 

 result of the directions which he may give 

 to others." 



Four years is but a small part of Fara- 

 day's period required 'to make a man' in 

 the physical sciences, and in so short a 

 period (which is the duration of the en- 

 gineering college course) only the founda- 

 tions of the engineer (the man in science, 

 business and sociology) can be laid. "There 

 is a great difference between reading and 

 study; or between the indolent reception 

 of knowledge without labor, and that effort 

 of mind which is always necessary in order 

 to secure an important truth and make it 

 fully our own," said Joseph Henry; and 

 the engineering college course should be 

 bent toward such a complete and true 

 presentation of thorough science and truth 

 that the student is incited permanently to 

 secure it for himself and make it fully his 



own— and he may then put it to valuable 

 use in future practice. "It is not enough 

 to join learning and knowledge to the 

 mind; it should be incorporated into it.'.' 



The engineering college graduate should 

 be a fertile and an exact thinker, and a 

 man of value upon his graduation; but he 

 can not come to his highest fruition until 

 years thereafter. The speaker would 

 gladly be judged of the success of his 

 teaching by the success attained by his 

 students after years of practice in their 

 profession, but let no judgment be passed 

 (as is so often done in some colleges) upon 

 the basis of wages received during the year 

 after graduation. Our engineering college 

 teaching may be properly condemned if it 

 does not plant those methods of thought 

 which will grow more valuable with the 

 years, and, indeed, become most valuable 

 only after the mature development of the 

 individual. 



The engineering course should not be 

 too formal or limited to the expository 

 methods used of old in instruction in 

 classics. Professor Tait speaks the views 

 of the scientist when he says : " It is better 

 to have a rough climb (even cutting one's 

 steps here and there) than to ascend the 

 dreary monotony of a marble staircase or 

 a well-made ladder. Royal roads to knowl- 

 edge reach only the particular locality 

 aimed at, and there are no views by the 

 way. It is not on them that pioneers are 

 trained for the exploration of iinknown 

 regions." The truth of this proposition 

 has been discovered of late years by even 

 the most ardent classicists, and those of 

 us who are called upon to teach men in 

 every one of whom must be developed a 

 certain spirit and power 'for the explora- 

 tion of unknown regions' — we who meet 

 this unique problem, untrammeled by 

 traditions and strongly aided by the in- 

 fluence and examples of the old engineers, 

 should most fully appreciate and adopt 



