1879O 
National Scientific Appointments. 
727 
we require a good ship-carpenter; we do not deem it need- 
ful to test his abilities in Turkey-red dyeing, or in glass- 
blowing, or in shoe-making. We are content that he shall 
be a specialist ; we believe that all those powers of body or 
of mind which are required in his art can be best trained 
and developed in the acquirement and exercise of that very 
art. We do not fancy that a blacksmith requires to exercise 
his muscles by preliminary practice as an oarsman ; we do 
not dream that a railway official ora pilot, in order to appre- 
ciate coloured signal-flags or fires, ought to serve an initia- 
tory training in a dye-house. We go still further: we are 
apt to suspedt the man who lays claim to proficiency in 
several arts or trades. We know that, however able and 
industrious a man may be, life is too short for the attain- 
ment of excellence in many different directions. We prefer 
the man whose whole time and whose individual energies 
have been concentrated on the subjedt we want, and, pro- 
vided he gives us full satisfaction therein, we care little as 
to his “ general culture.” Even professional men are apt 
to suffer in the confidence of the public if it is known that 
they study any subject not strictly within the sphere of 
their more immediate duties. We have heard of a physician 
who had given much time and attention to the study of 
geology, and to the formation of a geological museum in 
the town where he lived. No one was, indeed, prepared to 
say that he had ever negleCted a patient, or that he was out 
of the way if called for ; still the people argued, roughly, 
but not in the main inaccurately, that he would have been 
a more able and successful physician had he not been a 
geologist, and he suffered in their opinion in consequence. 
In scientific education, and in the preparation for certain 
professional careers, we do the very reverse of all that has 
just been described. We despise and rejedt the specialist, 
and call out for the “ good man all round” — the man whose 
time and attention have been equally distributed. We for- 
get that in these days each science has become so immense 
in extent that to keep up with the progress of discovery in 
one only branch is a task of no trifling magnitude, and that 
the Polyhistor of the day is a mere superficial trifler. To adt 
on our present principle is not only to waste time, but to run 
the risk of acquiring habits of thought foreign to our imme- 
diate purpose. If a student has to learn to distinguish 
nicely between peculiarities of form, of texture, of colour, 
odour, and the like, he will not be greatly aided by turning 
his attention to words and abstractions. 
So long as we insist upon general culture as obligatory, 
