Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/652

632 skill. By introducing this branch of study at too early a period we force our students to act as machines, inasmuch as they do not, and can not, know enough to work intelligently; we are but trying to make them run before they have learned to walk. Even when the interactions on which qualitative analysis is based are fully studied, and the equations relating thereto are conscientiously written out, the result is not much better, owing to the slight importance of so many of the interactions apart from their technical application in analysis, and especially on account of our ignorance of the precise nature of many of the interchanges of which we avail ourselves: the persistent misrepresentation of facts which such a course encourages is, in my opinion, one of its worst features.

I believe that in the near future our students will first be set to solve problems, each in its way a little research, and involving much simple quantitative work; they will thus be taught chemical method, or, in other words, the art of discovery. They will then be taken through a course of quantitative exercises with the object of making them acquainted, by direct contact with the facts, with the fundamental principles of our science, which are but too rarely appreciated at the present day. After this, they will seek to acquire proficiency in quantitative analysis and in the art of making preparations; and subsequently they will give sufficient attention to the study of physical properties to enable them to appreciate the physico-chemical methods of inquiry which are now of such importance. The study of qualitative analysis in detail will be left to the last, as being an eminently technical subject. Meanwhile, by attendance at lectures, by reading carefully chosen works of a kind altogether different from the soul-destroying text-books we now possess, and especially by the study of classical models in chemical literature, they will have acquired what is commonly spoken of as theoretical knowledge, but too often regarded by us as of secondary importance, and which it is so difficult to make Englishmen realize means a proper understanding of the subject. Students so trained—imbued from the outset, even from early school days, with the research spirit will at all times be observant and critical, nay, even logical; dogmatic teaching will cease to have any charm for them: they will actually take deep interest in their studies—a result devoutly to be hoped for, as nothing is more galling to the teacher at the present day than the crass indifference of the average student and his refusal to give attention to anything unless it will pay in an examination. At the close of such a course the student will be thoroughly prepared to undertake original investigation, distinctly with the object of exhibiting his individuality and originality, and not, as at present, with the object of