566 INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF EDUCATION. 
sional schools is business ; but an inevitable result of this course of intellectual applica- 
tion is the training of the reasoning and constructive faculties, and the production of a 
certain combination which no other course of instruction ever yet gave or could give. 
Here the judgment comes in as an element of education, and is itself a product of educa- 
tion; and the man inevitably acquires wisdom where he before too often attained only 
to cyclopedic knowledge, and that of the most unavailable and valueless kind. The 
qualities acquired by the gymnastic training of the older curriculum were only the cul- 
‘vation and strengthening of the faculties, as the gymnast in the ring or in’ his boat 
ouilds up and symmetrizes his muscles. It dues not follow that he is more useful to him- 
self or to his fellows for the possession of a better disciplined mind or body. He is sim ply 
prepared to make himself a more useful member of society, and to get more out of life 
tor himself and others. Engineering, in its applications of science to specific ends, 
to the solution of problems exactly defined in advance, fits the man to make direct and 
productive application of his faculties, to conquer the world for himself, and to help his 
neighbor and the race. 
Engineering, more than any other, is a profession based upon applied mathematics. 
It affords the mind that combination of exercise and discipline, that power of doing, 
and that knowledge of the ways of doing, which best trains the man and best prepares 
him for life and work. 1 should say that applied mathematics, as a study, may be 
relied upon to give the mind apprehension of exact and clear thinking, and of absolute, 
chain-like logic, such as no other intellectual exercise can give; that the study of the 
sciences generally gives the habit and the power of precise observation and accurate 
statement ; that the application of the sciences to the constructive arts, in the higher 
departments of engineering, trains the mind, and the character as well, and gives judg- 
ment, and the habit of using it with discretion and with fruitfulness of result. 
I would, in view of these well-established facts, go even further than the writer of the 
paper under discussion, and would uphold the thesis that, in the most important branches 
of education, engineering and its preliminary studies give the man a better training in 
the most important elements of the perfect character, intellectually, than any other 
known element of the curriculum ; and I would assert that they give development in 
directions in which the old curriculum was comparatively useless and ineffective. The 
older schools gave knowledge; these give wisdom. The older gave a leading-string ; 
these give the power and the confidence needed to go alone. Those gave every oppor- 
sunity to develop the weaknesses of human vanity, to make a pedant, or an intellectual 
“dude”; these prune out every such folly, and teach the man to stand upon a real 
foundation of knowledge and power, or, if unequal to his task, to fairly judge, to admire, 
and to respect those who can and will. Pedantry in engineering is even more nearly 
unknown than in medicine. It flourishes only among half-trained or unsymmetrically 
trained minds, and then only when the experiences of practical life do not come in to 
liscipline the callow brain. 
The applied mathematics, the professions, engineering even, do not give a complete 
and perfect education, nevertheless ; and I am only the more earnest in advocacy of the 
ralue of the ‘liberal education,” after long observation of the effect of an education 
cestricted to professional studies, whether in law, medicine, theology, or engineering, 
A truly ‘‘ liberal ” education is one which embodies in the curriculum the elements of 
all the literatures, all the sciences, and all the arts which make the life of the time. 
The older schools, especially those of a century and more ago, did not and could not 
zive a liberal education in the true sense; such, for example, as could the school at 
Alexandria in its time. Nor could the professional schools of any time, so far as they 
restricted themselves to professional work and the preparation for it, provide an educa- 
sion in any proper sense liberal. The classical education of the Latin schools is as far 
from a liberal education as is the modern education of the professional schools. The 
*“ complete and perfect education” of Milton involves and insists upon the whole basis 
of intellectual life : literature, the applied as well as the pure sciences, and the intellec- 
sual substance of the arts of the time. All these unite and constitute essential elements 
of the whole. Give the boy and the girl as broad and liberal an education as time and 
means permit ; send the youth into the higher schools and the colleges to obtain from 
the great masters in all the departments of real education such knowledge and discipline 
as they can provide ; then send the matured and trained mind into the professional 
school to secure familiarity with the arts of doing as well as the knowledge and judg- 
nent required for successful doing. Only then will the character and the faculties of the 
‘ndividual have become all that can be made of them in the morning of life. Thence- 
orward the soul must travel its own path, in its own way, and by its own light,