Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 62.djvu/453

Rh chemistry, like all the naturalist's subjects, the observational and experimental, seem necessarily to carry with them the paraphernalia of the laboratory. In every department of study there is some method apposite to that line of work which permits an appeal to the sense of inquisitiveness—a fundamental element of human nature and a most admirable and desirable one—and gives thus a means of approaching the mind by a direct and pleasant path. This is a principle now coming to be accepted as axiomatic, in education, in all its branches, and the once 'dry-as-dust' subjects are taking on new life and assuming lovely and engaging forms.

Thus we may steadily keep in mind, through the whole career of the youth intended to ultimately take part in the constructive work of the world, the fact that he must after a time take up technical studies and that, the more the work of the later years can be facilitated in the earlier, the better and the more profitable the earlier as well as the later work. The courses of instruction may perfectly well he made to include work in literature and in the pure sciences which is both valuable in the early gymnastic branches of education and useful in the later professional work. The earlier courses, in the case of the pupil, for example, who is proposing to fit himself for entrance into engineering or architecture, may perfectly well, and wisely should, be made to include just as much pure mathematics as can be had, just as much of chemistry and physics as the schools can provide and the modern languages in liberal amount.

Assuming that the aspirant for admission to the professional school, in this department, may follow his own bent, and that he desires to be educated and cultured as well as professionally expert, he will continue his work into the higher education, and there will elect advanced mathematics, will secure opportunities for experimental work in the physical laboratory, for work in analysis and synthesis in the chemical laboratory and for the study of the technical, as well as of the literary, works of modern writers in French and German and possibly in Italian and Spanish. If he is preparing himself to take up ultimately law or medicine or theology, he will similarly find in the college and university curricula various branches of study which will be of service either in shortening or in supplementing his work in the professional school. All such opportunities being taken advantage of, it will be found that the total time required to secure first an education and then a professional training will be greatly abridged without sensible loss in final results.

There are often subjects obtainable in the educational curriculum, or at least obtainable in connection therewith, which will be found either to constitute a part of the required work of the technical course, or to be likely to prove of special interest and advantage in connection