656 STRUCTURE AND GROWTH OF DOMESTICATED ANIMALS. 
that you have reduced it to a shapeless mass. These objects can- 
not be handled like a piece of wood. They must be treated with 
a degree of delicacy which makes it impossible, for instance, for 
an observer to use any stimulant, even such as coffee and tea, or 
to eat heartily, or to exercise in any degree which may accelerate 
the pulse; otherwise his eye will be constantly thrown out of 
focus. Unless a man has himself under control to that extent, he 
cannot begin to make good observations. Not only must he have 
the knowledge necessary, not only must he have the practice 
necessary, not only must he have the instruments necessary — he 
must have his own organization so completely under control that 
he brings himself into that living relation with the object of his 
observations which alone makes it possible that they shall be accu- 
rate. It is not everybody who is willing or able to do this; and 
then he must carry on his observations by day and night, as the 
embryo is growing unceasingly, and unless he does continue his 
observations uninterruptedly, he may miss the most important 
steps in the progress of growth. Now before you find a man 
qualified to be an observer, you may have to wait a long while. 
It was just so during our late war. We did not find the generals 
who knew how to command, the day of the first battle. It requires 
years to find a man capable of leading two hundred thousand men. 
In matters of scientific progress we need a great many students, 
and large schools, from which to pick out the man who is capable 
of making new discoveries, or simply accurate investigations ; and 
have we these schools now? Is the number of our scientific stu- 
dents proportionate to the intellectual capacity of the nation? By 
no means; and until our system of popular education is radically 
changed, or so far changed, at least, that in all our schools instruc- 
tion is given in those branches of science which train observers; 
you may not even have the knowledge necessary to carry on your 
practical pursuits, and still less the chances of making any real 
progress. These results can only be brought about by introducing 
into our schools that sort of instruction which prepares students 
to become observers, or at least, which gives the teacher an oppor 
tunity of ascertaining whether any of his pupils may be educated 
into an observer or not. Such schools we have not, such teachers 
we have not, or very few of them—half a dozen in Massachusetts 
is the sum-total of men qualified to teach in that way; and the 
schools in which they may teach, the apparatus necessary for that 
