1884.] 
On Technical Education. 
89 
conveyed will not be made a part of the learner’s own intel- 
ligence ; he cannot therefore reason upon it, and therefore 
he will not be able to apply it. 
Chemistry is more difficult to teach, from an educational 
point of view, than any of the other indudtive sciences; it 
consists of such a multitude of fadts without apparently 
much connection, and to fill the mind of the learner with 
any amount of these disconnected faCts, which is the sort of 
teaching most usually adopted, is not the teaching best 
adapted for increasing and strengthening the reasoning 
powers, and, further, it does not furnish the mind with the 
scientific material in the best form on which to reason. 
Yet, from a wide and varied experience, I have found it is 
capable of being taught by a system which renders it a most 
efficient agent for training the intellect and storing the mind 
with material of the greatest interest for it to reason upon 
and usefully to apply. 
Instead of commencing the teaching of the science by 
showing that two elements, A and B, can combine together, 
and so going on through a series of combinations of the 
different elements, which is the plan usually followed, the 
students aie taught by my system, once for all , by means of 
a few experiments, that all the elements are capable of 
uniting with one another ; and they at the same time learn, 
by the aid of these experiments, that the conditions necessary 
to bring about their union vary, and also the phenomena 
winch attend their combinations. This is a generalisation 
that I have found all, from 12 years old upwards, are capable 
of grasping, whereas the majority of students are bewildered 
when they are taken through the maze of combinations 
given in the couise usually followed. By a similar general- 
isation they are made acquainted with the combination of 
compound bodies. The conditions which favour the decom- 
position of compound substances were next studied. The 
experiments in this part of the course were performed by 
each individual learner, each of them being separately super- 
intended and instructed. They were taught at the same time 
the language of the science, as a language, by means of 
exeicises; they thus obtained a complete mastery over it. 
By no other system is the student taught the language as a 
language, and without, a knowledge of it he is without the 
instrument and nutriment of thought, and from ignorance 
of it the atmosphere in which chemical thought lives is 
wanting. 
I have dwelt upon the teaching of the elementary portion 
of the Science at greater length than I shall the more 
VOL. VI. (THIRD SERIES. H 
