tolerate freedom of speech on my part, I will answer this
question by an illustration. Strip a strong arm, and regard the
knotted muscles when the hand is clenched and the arm bent. Is this
exhibition of energy the work of the muscle alone? By no means. The
muscle is the channel of an influence, without which it would be as
powerless as a lump of plastic dough. It is the delicate unseen nerve
that unlocks the power of the muscle. And without those filaments of
genius, which have been shot like nerves through the body of society
by the original discoverer, industrial America, and industrial
England, would be very much in the condition of that plastic dough.

At the present time there is a cry in England for technical education,
and it is a cry in which the most commonplace intellect can join, its
necessity is so obvious. But there is no such cry for original
investigation. Still, without this, as surely as the stream dwindles
when the spring dies, so surely will 'technical education' lose all
force of growth, all power of reproduction. Our great investigators
have given us sufficient work for a time; but if their spirit die out,
we shall find ourselves eventually in the condition of those Chinese
mentioned by De Tocqueville, who, having forgotten the scientific
origin of what they did, were at length compelled to copy without
variation the inventions of an ancestry wiser than themselves, who had
drawn their inspiration direct from Nature.

Both England and America have reason to bear those things in mind, for
the largeness and nearness of material results are only too likely to
cause both countries to forget the small spiritual beginnings of such
results, in the mind of the scientific discoverer. You multiply, but
he creates. And if you starve him, or otherwise kill him--nay, if you
fail to secure for him free scope and encouragement--you not only lose
the motive power of intellectual progress, but infallibly sever
yourselves from the springs of industrial life.

What has been said of technical operations holds equally good for
education, for here also the original investigator constitutes the
fountain-head of knowledge. It belongs to the teacher to give this
knowledge the requisite form; an honourable and often a difficult
task. But it is a task which receives its final sanctification, when
the teacher himself honestly tries to add a rill to the great stream
of scientific discovery. Indeed, it may be doubted whether