engine, while ignorant of its nature and powers. What should we expect, if the engineering of our steam-boats were committed to men who had never examined nor studied their machinery? Should we not feel that the

lives of the passengers were in peril? Should we not fear that serious if not fatal derangements would inevitably take place, and that such derangements would hardly, if ever, be repaired? What better can we expect of those, who, in any of the arts, attempt to employ powers or properties of which they are ignorant? What shall prevent them from attempting things, which, in their very nature, are impossible? or from employing means inadequate or actually opposed to the end they have in view? or from adopting tedious, expensive, and laborious, methods of accomplishing their purposes, instead of those which are short, economical, and easy! or, finally, from leaving unattempted, what, with proper knowledge, they might not only have attempted, but have accomplished without difficulty?

"Knowledge is power." Instruct the artisan in the powers and principles of Nature, and he can always employ them in the cheapest and most effectual manner. But ignorance has no security from error. If right, it is right only by accident, or by following some arbitrary rule; and, since accident is subject to no rule, and arbitrary rules must often fail, through some defect in themselves or their application, it follows, that failures must often occur, unnecessarily. Ignorance, therefore, is weakness. If the weakness be not observed by others, or felt by the artisan himself, it is only because he and his employers are alike uninstructed. It must be apparent to every mind, that, if the physician were unacquainted with the structure and functions of the body, if he knew little of the nature of diseases or of the properties of medicinal substances, his art would become the art of killing, rather than of curing. But there is surely little more quackery, in attempting to treat an animal system, of the nature of which we are igno

rant, than there is in undertaking to manage inanimate agents, respecting which we are equally ignorant. It can savor but little more of presumption, for a man, who is unacquainted with anatomy, to undertake the treatment of complicated fractures or dangerous wounds, than it does for him, who understands neither the laws of motion nor the principles of machinery, to offer to construct or repair a complicated engine or instrument. In some cases, both may succeed; and, since the structure of most machines is less intricate than that of a limb, it is not to be doubted, that the uninstructed artisan will succeed more frequently than the uninstructed surgeon. But instances will often occur, in which both must fail. The limited knowledge acquired from experience will not reach the case, and the operator is left to the mortifying alternative, of trying random experiments or of declining to act.

It will not be inferred, we trust, from these remarks, that we undervalue the aid which may be derived, by practical men, from experience. We know, that, by means of it, they acquire a skill which no books can communicate, and without which the most extensive theoretical knowledge would be of little avail. Nor is it my purpose to institute a comparison between the relative values of science and experience, in cases where only one can be attained. In the present age, and in our country, both can be had. While the apprentice is receiving the practical directions of his master; while he is habituating his eye to watch, and his hand to guide, the various processes of his art; he may, at the same time, be studying the principles on which that art depends. In every process, he avails himself of some law of Nature. That law he may be made to comprehend; and we maintain, that, having been made to comprehend it, having ascertained the general and universal principles on which his operations depend, together with such collateral knowledge as he can gather, with ease, from works on popular science, he will have a vast advantage over the artist who works merely

from experience or by arbitrary rule. These advantages we propose to specify.

I. In the first place, he will be prepared for a greater number of emergencies. However great the experience of the artisan, it cannot but happen, that he will meet, in practice, many cases which are new. Some change in the quality of his materials, or in the construction of his tools, or some new fact developed in the course of his operations, will place him in a situation hitherto untried. His master's directions will not avail him, for they never contemplated such a case. His own experience will not suffice, for it reaches to no such contingency. One of those books, called Guides for carpenters, masons, &c., will not answer, for it gives only arbitrary rules for such cases as have fallen under the immediate eye of the author or of his informers. Whither, then, shall he resort? If he attempt to investigate the problem for himself, and find some solution, it is an attempt for which he is disqualified by his previous habits. Instead of being accustomed to reflect upon his own labors, to investigate the reasons, the why and the wherefore of them, he has gone through them mechanically, like a dray horse; he has never even dreamed that they could furnish occasion for sober and intense study. If, aroused for the first time to this truth, he sets himself to reflect closely upon the case before him, he has, to guide his inquiries, no knowledge, either of the laws which occasion this novel difficulty, or of those other laws, which might have furnished a remedy.

Suppose, for instance, that a farmer, accustomed to till a certain soil, were to remove, where he is called to deal with one entirely different. Having found, on his first farms, that plaster, and certain systems of culture, were profitable, he will proceed, if he be one of your practical farmers, who trusts entirely to experience, and laughs at book-learning, to employ the same system here. But perhaps it is without success. His plaster seems to kill vegetation, and his system of culture ends. in a meager crop. Now, what shall he do? Neither

his own experience, nor any rules that he has heard, from his father or his neighbors, prepare him for such an emergency; and very possibly his new neighbors have not yet discovered the proper mode of treating the soil which they cultivate. His only alternative, therefore, is to work on, at random, trying one experiment after another, having no principle to guide, no precise object to direct, his course; and expending money and toil, perhaps for years, without success.

The uninstructed artist, therefore, is not prepared for new emergencies. He can move only in one dull routine; and over that, he travels almost without observation or thought. If he had been accustomed, however, from youth, to regard the processes of his art as specimens of yet more extensive operations, which God is carrying on, throughout all Nature; as examples of comprehensive principles, which are at work in all places and at all times, and which embrace innumerable other instances, generally though not precisely similar, he would not have been so easily baffled. Having studied and mastered the great laws on which his art depends, he would be prepared for difficulties, and often would have converted into sources of profit, what has now proved only the occasion of defeat and disappointment. He would have found, in science, not merely the experience of his instructers or predecessors in the same art; but THE EXPERIENCE OF ALL MANKIND, BOTH PHILOSOPHERS AND ARTISANS. The very object of science is, to present us with the result of all their observations and experiments, on any given subject, embodied in the simplest and most regular form.

Take the farmer, for example, to whom we have just referred. Had he been acquainted with a small work of Sir H. Davy's, entitled 'the Principles of Agricultural Chemistry,' or with a similar work, by Chaptal, he would have learned, that the treatment of soils, by manure, is a chemical process; that the manure required by any soil depends upon the constituents of that soil,

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and the proportion in which they are combined; and that it is in the power of the chemist, if to his scientific knowledge he adds experience, to determine, beforehand, the proper quality and quantity of the manure which ought to be applied in any given case. So with the gardener, who, laboring in a particular district, has seen great benefits result from the mixture of different soils. On removing to another district, he would naturally expect, if he relied solely on his experience, to find similar effects from the same mixture. But, if he be a scientific gardener, he will be careful, before resorting to that mixture, to examine his new soil, both on the surface and at some depth. He will find out whether it has the same essential qualities; and if not, he will endeavor to ascertain what are its characteristic excellences and defects, and then determine, by the application of chemical principles, what mixture of soil, or what sort of manure, is requisite.

CHAPTER III.

OTHER ADVANTAGES WHICH THE INSTRUCTED HAS OVER THE UNINSTRUCTED ARTISAN.

II. A second and most important advantage, enjoyed by the artisan who combines science with practical skill, is the command which it gives him over simpler, cheaper, and more certain, methods of attaining his ends. It may be affirmed, we believe, with entire safety, that there is no art, the processes of which are yet reduced to their utmost simplicity. Not only are inventions, at their first introduction, encumbered with much that is extraneous and unnecessary, but even processes, which have been transmitted from age to age, instead of becoming more simple, appear, in many cases, to have gathered intricacy from time. Take, for example, the manufacture of soap, one of the most sim