l877 TECHNICAL EDUCATION jOg 



impossible that over-instruction may be worse." The aim of 

 the Livery Companies should specially be to aid the practical 

 teaching of science, so that at bottom the question turns 

 mainly on the supply of teachers. 



On December ii, 1879, he found a further opportu- 

 nity of urging the cause of Technical Education. A lecture 

 on Apprenticeships was delivered before the Society of Arts 

 by Professor Silvanus Thompson. Speaking after the lec- 

 ture (see report in Nature, 1879, p. 139) he discussed the 

 necessity of supplying the place of the old apprenticeships 

 by educating children in the principles of their particular 

 crafts, beyond the time when they were forced to enter the 

 workshops. This could be done by establishing schools in 

 each centre of industry, connected with a central institution, 

 such as was to be found in Paris or Zurich. As for com- 

 plaints of deficient teaching of handicrafts in the Board 

 Schools, it was more important for them to make intelligent 

 men than skilled workmen, as again was indicated in the 

 French system. 



As President of the Royal Society, he was on the above- 

 mentioned Committee of the Guilds from 1883 to 1885, and 

 on December 10, 1883, distributed the prizes in connection 

 with the institution in the Clothworkers' Hall. After sketch- 

 ing the inception of the whole scheme, he referred to the 

 Central Institute, then in course of building (begun in 1882, 

 it was finished in 1884; the Technical College, Finsbury, 

 was older by a year), and spoke of the difficulties in the 

 way of organising such an institution : — 



That building is simply the body, not the flesh and bones, but 

 the bricks and stones, of the Central Institute, and the business 

 upon which Sir F. Bramwell and my other colleagues on the 

 Committee have been so much occupied, is the making a soul 

 for this body; and I can assure you making a soul for anything 

 is an amazingly difficult operation. You are always in danger 

 of doing as the man in the story of Frankenstein did, and making 

 something which will eventually devour you instead of being 

 useful to you. 



And here I may give a letter which refers to the move- 

 ment for technical education, and the getting the City Com- 



