now laid down for our best engineering schools, as these are already up to the limit of the average preparatory schools of high grade. Provision for such broader training appears feasible therefore only in two ways; either (1) by increasing the length of a course of study in engineering schools to five or six years; or (2) by reducing the amount of time now given to specialized study of narrow engineering topics.

This problem has received considerable attention at Union College and a course of study is now under consideration which by extending over six years will include virtually all of the classical college course without Greek and all of the general engineering course without much specialization. The work of the two courses has been carefully correlated and the studies of both interwoven together throughout the six years in such manner as best develop the man and the engineer together. If finally adopted* this course will not replace the present four-year engineering courses, but will be alternative to them and young men who are able to devote six years to their general and professional education, which is not more than is now given for similar training in law, theology or medicine, will, it is believed, secure a much better assimilated training than if the engineering course were given after the completion of the college

course.

In such a course the study of philosophy and the humanities in general, selected and taught with special reference to the training of the citizen-engineer, finds adequate provision.

MR. B. JONES, JR.: As I said in my paper, to live Subsequent to the date of this discussion, the above course was officially adopted by the faculty of the Union College Engineering School.

*

at all we must philosophize and guide ourselves by our philosophy. To make our philosophy for our own lives a true philosophy, we must be trained to think logically. But the life of each one of us is not a separate entity-it is a part of a fuller life that is inclusive of all life. The philosopher studies our individual lives as contrasted with this inclusive life, and so seeks to find the laws of conduct which should govern our activities.

The question is then, how are we to give our students this perspective view of life. Are we to leave them to find their own rule-of-thumb ethics? Do you not realize that much of your dissatisfaction with your own life, that many of your own failures are due simply to the fact that you were never given any means to logically gage your purposes and so your deeds? It is just such a gage as this that philosophy furnishes, and for this reason I believe that in any school of any kind philosophy should be made an integral part of the curriculum. I do not refer to the cut and dried philosophy of the text-books. I mean the general philosophic attitude-to teach engineering not as merely a recurrent application of certain empirical rules of experience, but as a means of embodying our purposes, and a critical examination of these purposes-how they arise, what influences mould them, and so, whether they are good or evil.

We should begin then very early with the training of the young mind in the path of reason. The student should receive a very careful training in the analysis of first principles and their relations to thoughts and ideas-as the modern child is taught arithmetic-not by a mere sing-song recurrent rote, but by first seeing that the expression of the self

takes the general form of the well-ordered series and that the fundamental category of the human mind is the category of order.

I have spoken of the philosophic attitude in teaching. Let me illustrate what I mean. Numbers of the older graduates from Sibley College have told me that one most valuable part of their course was the course of lectures on geodesy delivered by the lamented Professor Fuertes and this was so not because the lectures of Professor Fuertes dealt ably with the subject of geodesy. They were usually not lectures on geodesy at all. They were talks on the philosophy of living.

I am not a professional teacher, and I do not know what is the best way to give the student this philosophic training. I only feel its lack, not only in my own case, but also in the case of the great majority of technical graduates with whom I have had opportunity to talk. I believe that the student should be taught something of the nature of the principal tool he has to use-namely his mind. Psychology and logic are as important to the engineer as physics and mathematics.

PROFESSOR WALDO: How many good engineers would have been spoiled by waiting for them to get their A.B. degrees before entering upon their technical training?

MR. B. JONES, JR.: I do not believe that we would spoil any good engineers, but we would prevent a good many bad ones from getting into practice.

PROFESSOR CALDWELL: I am a great believer in the general training of an engineer and think that there is much to be looked for in this combination of the arts course with engineering. We must have special

ists, but, especially where there is no essential reason for hurrying a man through, it is always wise to broaden out, and to get more than a strictly technical training. It seems to me that the combining of the courses, as is often done with law schools, can be very well extended to the engineering colleges. We have, however, one difficult problem to deal with, namely, the bringing of the students to appreciate this point of view. I remember that four years ago one of our engineering professors was very much pleased to have persuaded a promising young man to start in the arts course with the expectation of later taking one of the engineering courses. I was, therefore, interested to learn recently that this student, having finished his arts course, was now going immediately into practical work.

PROFESSOR MARVIN: This leads to a rather fundamental thing, and I think that what has been said would be applicable to much of the work that has been done in our colleges as well as to work in the technical schools. It is a matter of more specialists, and I have come into contact with plenty of people in sympathy with it. Now it seems to me that we must take conditions just as we find them. It is well enough to think of the ideal man, but those of us who are connected with state institutions know that we must take the material that comes to us as graduates of high schools and train it, as best we know how, in order that we may get the best results; so that it is a matter of more education for the great majority rather than an education for gifted people. I think that we ought to have means for doing this, but we cannot do that and gain the most. Now I think that there are some things that can be done in a school

with a four year's technical course without the necessity of putting in courses in philosophy. I perfectly well agree with the suggestion that has been made that the personality of the teacher has more to do with a student's outlook on life, more to do with 'his breadth of view, than anything else. I know one man, an experienced teacher, who will stop a recitation suddenly, without premeditation, however, in the resistance of materials for example, and go off into a discussion of ethics, matters of taste or other desirable things that a man should know about, which are not found in a scheme of study, but which have much to do with a young man's outlook on his future life. The digression is stimulating to the men and its spontaneity gives it force and effect. It even stimulates effort along technical lines.

MR. B. JONES, JR.: I cannot agree with one of the speakers that the processes of evolution are continuous after the nature of the continuity of a straight line. Evolution is the name for the general type of change processes that we find common to both organic and inorganic worlds. These processes are always cyclic changes having a very general recurrent form. There is development to a certain critical point after which there is a general re-arrangement of the factors involved followed by a further change often in a very different direction. Such critical points we meet in the melting point of ice and the boiling point of water; in the sudden rearrangement of the corpuscles in the atom as developed in recent experiments on the nature of matter and as illustrated by Professor Mayer's experiments with floating magnets; in birth and death; and in Professor de Vries' experiments on mutation in plants; Darwin's own work on evolution furnishing another point in question.