406 On Technical Education. [July, 
Socrates undertakes to show his friend that his boy servant 
or slave knew Geometry, Socrates commences with the 
figure of a square which the boy knew, and he proceeds in 
such a natural order that the boy discovered, by his own 
unaided efforts, as it were, what he had not known before. 
The change the learner displays for acquiring knowledge 
is marvellous, if a rational method of teaching a subject — a 
method in accordance with the laws of mental development 
— is substituted for a mechanical routine system ; the apathy 
and disgust for learning he had before shown is replaced by 
the greatest earnestness and delight. I have been a witness 
of many cases of the kind ; but the one which most impressed 
me I will briefly relate : — Many years ago I accepted the 
post of teacher of Chemistry at Queenwood College, Hamp- 
shire ; the College at that time comprised a boys’ school and 
an Agricultural College ; the Agricultural pupils were all 
young men ; most of the boys as well as the young men were 
instructed in chemical analysis in the laboratory attached to 
the Institution. When I entered upon my duties, I found 
the book in use was the “ Giessen Outlines,” and, to my 
surprise and discouragement, both the young men and boys 
exhibited a thorough disgust for Chemistry as a study : the 
young men would not, with the exception of one or two, 
attend the classes on this subject, and the boys onlyattended 
their’s under compulsion. Most of them could analyse com- 
plicated mixtures pretty accurately ; but they did not know 
why and the wherefore ; they simply made the analyses as 
directed by the tables in the book. They explained to me 
why they disliked the subject ; they said, “ we can make the 
analyses, but we do not understand what we are doing, and 
therefore we do not like the study.” After much thought 
upon the matter, I drew up some analytical tables myself, 
which I afterwards published, which overcame all the diffi- 
culties, and turned a study which had hitherto caused disgust 
into a great source of pleasure to both classes of students : 
not one of them would be willingly absent from class after 
the change in the method of teaching the subject had been 
made. The tables were framed in accordance with the laws 
of mental evolution ; they are so constructed that the learner 
has to exercise the faculty of judgment or comparison (per- 
ception of difference or agreement), which philosophers of 
all schools agree in placing amongst the original powers of 
the human being. The system compels the pupil himself to 
Compare , Distinguish , Judge ; he therefore becomes an * 
intelligent and aCtive Discoverer , for he discovers, himself, 
the methods for separating and detecting the different 
