124 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XIV. No. 343. 



not forget that we are educating men for a 

 life ; that we must look forward to the time 

 when these young people will be fifty years 

 old, and at the period of their maximum 

 productiveness as workers and of maximum 

 value in society and as citizens. 



Engineers have to deal with other things 

 besides materials and physical laws ; they 

 must manage men and matters of finance. 

 If they are to rightly influence those whose 

 capital they are employed to expend, they 

 must be able to meet them socially and in- 

 tellectually, to discuss intelligently matters 

 outside the pale of strictly professional 

 life. Evidence of professional ability and 

 skill is of course first demanded, but 

 breadth of culture creates an added con- 

 fidence in the wisdom of the conclusions 

 reached and the advice given. 



Heretofore much of our engineering work 

 has been concerned with the opening and 

 developing of new country or new business 

 and industrial enterprises. So engineers 

 have found their work away from con- 

 tact with men. But engineering practice 

 is changing, as conditions become older and 

 more settled, and more and more practi- 

 tioners find their work in communities and 

 busy centers of trade where they are con- 

 stantly thrown into close contact with 

 strong and cultured men. Present engi- 

 neering courses do little to prepare a man 

 for this thorough instruction concerning 

 human nature and human relations. Some- 

 thing of history, economics and sociology 

 should be included. 



Fifth : It is not sufiicient to form correct 

 judgments only ; there must be added a 

 skilful and eflective presentation of them 

 in well chosen and fitting English. The 

 ability to do this involves more than train 

 ing in the writing of compositions, themes, 

 forensics and reports. The cultured man 

 should have a taste for reading the best 

 that has been written in his mother tongue, 

 and for several reasons : The great 



thoughts of great minds are stimulating 

 and broadening to his own mind ; he there- 

 by absorbs a knowledge of words and their 

 shades of meaning ; he gains an apprecia- 

 tion of style and insensibly better knows 

 how to form his own ; and, not least by any 

 means, he makes of his books friends that are 

 life-long, that cheer and console him under 

 all happenings, adding much to his internal 

 resources for happiness. 



The time given to English in our courses 

 is not enough to train students properly in 

 its use and at the same time open the doors 

 to our best literature. It may be said that 

 all this English work should be done in 

 the preparatory school, and it is probably 

 true that the character and quality of the 

 high-school English is better to-day than it 

 has been heretofore. Yet it seems to me 

 that engineering students should have some 

 training of a college grade along the line of 

 literature. 



Sixth : To the writer's mind, there is 

 another element of culture that should enter 

 into an engineer's training, viz., an appre- 

 ciation for beauty. As he has said at 

 another time ^ the engineer is a designer, 

 and it is important that he should embody 

 his design in artistic form if he is to fulfil 

 his whole mission and please and gratify 

 others by the perfection of his work. The 

 engineering student devotes a good share 

 of his time to the drawing-board, and much 

 can be done here toward the cultivation of 

 this quality by an instructor who possesses 

 it, without lessening at all the amount or 

 force of the technical exercises for which 

 the process is primarily used. There 

 should be, however, something further by 

 way of giving instruction in elementary 

 aesthetics and by opening the students' 

 eyes to what is beautiful in nature. 



Seventh : The possession of agreeable 

 manners and tact is another evidence of 



"^Proceedings of the American Association for the 

 Advancement of Science, Vol. 45. 



