many of our classical colleges are yearly grinding out their grists of such intellectual chaff, for it would seem that the higher university classical education often unfits its recipients for anything except routine work, and they crowd into and often dishonor the so-called learned professions, and then make their living in questionable ways, or starve. In the great cities of Germany the poor boards are constantly called upon to relieve men of the highest classical training, because they can not make a living in their chosen field of work, and are unfitted for the trades and arts. Horace Greeley must have had in mind this kind of education when he exclaimed, "Of all horned cattle, deliver me from the college graduate!"
The colleges that accomplish the most good turn the students' attention to the demands of the times, and thus fit them for the most honorable walks of life. One of the supreme advantages that is derived from a technical education is that it does not unfit men for labor; but from its very method of acquirement—the laboratory—it teaches us that labor is the highest application of the intellect, and the only perfect means of acquiring real knowledge. Nor are the rewards of scientific education to be undervalued, and the industrial opportunities of the scientist to be overlooked.
The wonderful progress in the development of the natural and physical sciences has come through the agency of experiment and comparison. In this, the scientific method, the student at his home masters the text-books; in the library and reading room he studies the works of the best authors and investigators; in the lecture room he is drilled in theory and application; and in the laboratory he puts questions to Nature and receives her replies; and thus develops strength in all the faculties of a true investigator. Liebig, in chemistry, was the first to adopt teaching by experiment about fifty years ago; but other scientists, one after another, have since adopted the laboratory method, until it is now advocated in language, philosophy, literature, and even law.
The exigencies of modern progress in the arts demand that technical institutions of learning shall keep abreast of the times, and this is especially true in regard to schools that profess to turn out practical chemists, geologists, mining engineers, and metallurgists, thoroughly equipped to take immediate charge of important enterprises, or to advise as to investments in new and untried fields. The advances which are now being made in the practice of analytical and industrial chemistry and metallurgy, and in nearly all allied industries, are so rapid that methods described in text-books written for the use of students often become obsolete by the time the books are published.
