DISCUSSION. 
549 
continent of North America ; but this can only prove true prophecy when 
che people of the United States and of every State shall have performed 
sheir greatest work and their noblest duty by insuring to all their succes- 
sors the lofty privilege of education, each for his own life, and of system- 
atic training, each for his own chosen work in life. De Tocqueville says : 
““ The Americans of the United States, whatever they do, will become 
one of the greatest nations of the earth.” * We may confidently hope 
and believe that his prophecy will be ultimately fulfilled ; bat it will come 
of highest statecraft, not of politics ; of real wisdom, not of policy; and 
only when the ¢“ complete and perfect education ” of a great people for the 
life and work of a great people shall have fitted it for its final destiny. 
[t is the steady and rapid evolution of this great system of preparation 
for a grand destiny that we see now progressing throughout the country, 
and which will soon result in a combination of private, State, and national 
support of this most substantial of all possible foundations for nationality 
and life such as will make safe the accomplishment of that most remark- 
able of all these predictions : 
‘* Westward the course of empire takes its way; 
The first four acts already past, 
fifth shall close the drama with the day; 
[ime’s nok’est offspring is the last.” 
\ 
DISCUSSION. 
ProrEssor R. H. RicHARDS, of Boston : I would like to say a word in regard to my 
axperience in three points that have been brought up by the speakers: (1) Who is the best 
judge, the engineer or the teacher? (2) Is the immediate or ultimate success to be sought? 
3) Is it better to seek first for culture and then professional training, or to seek culture 
by and with professional training? 
In regard to the question, Who is the best judge, the engineer or the teacher? we have 
had recently a very interesting point come up. A very prominent engineering paper 
in one of our large cities had articles upon the different professional schools, coming 
out in successive numbers, and among other subjects was taking up the mining schools 
of the United States. 1am to be connected with one of the mining schools, and am 
particularly interested in these papers. The editor was an engineer ; he was a teacher. 
I'herefore his opinions come directly within this question, Who is the best judge, the 
engineer or the teacher? He looked up statistics for his opinions, and quoted statistics, 
and from these he found that there was a lower percentage of mining engineers, of 
students who had been trained as mining engineers, than in any other profession. He 
argues that because there are a lower number of mining engineers, therefore the 
schools of mining engineering are not doing their work as well as the schools in the 
other engineering lines. This set me thinking a little, and I began to look at our own 
experience in the school with which I am connected. He also argues that our schools 
are too general ; our mining course too general. They do not differentiate sufficiently. 
We happened three or four years ago to put in a set of differentiations in our mining 
course. We divided it into a course of steam engine and power. and a course in chem- 
istry, and so on. We made a third course, in which students took a very much larger 
proportion of civil engineering, and we still gave them the title, upon graduation, of 
mining engineers. The first result of this differentiation was that one-third of our 
+“ De la Démocratie en Amérique,’ 1864, t. ii. chap. x. p. 399. 
- Bishop Berkeley, * Works,” vol. ii. p. 443.