both angles. To lay a foundation for the understanding of the relation of literature and science is one of the first requisites of that training which aims to educate engineers that they may be "not only expert in science but reverent toward life."

Here is the function of literature, and in this idea lies the unity of the two aims of English work. To train the student to write by first training him to think: to stimulate his thought by directing his attenion to problems of his own profession and of his own education and to the illumination of them which he can find in literature: these two tasks may be performed together - better together than separately - and with that double aim in view this collection has been made.

The outline and arrangement of the book are dictated by the aims which have just been explained. The first section is an attempt to make the student see the dependence of writing on thinking, to impress upon him the first of all principles of good writing, that he must have something to say. The sad results of trying to teach students to write on the other principle, putting the stress not upon thought but upon words, need no commentary to one who has studied the history of the teaching of English in this country. The trend of recent opinion is in the other direction and that fact is the best of auguries for the effective teaching of composition.

The sections following are intended to direct the student in thinking out for himself the relations of his scientific studies to that other great body of thought contained in literature. The bridge is not ready built: the task of building it is left to him under the guidance

of his teacher. A variety of considerations and points of view are presented with the design of stimulating his thought, not of doing his thinking for him.

The second and third sections are devoted to essays dealing with the profession of engineering and the demands which it makes on the engineering schools. The student can never see the relation between engineering and literature until he has some idea of what he means by engineering, until he makes up his mind for himself whether he is learning a trade or a profession, and until he forms for himself some conception of the opportunity of the engineer for human leadership in this new epoch which is being ushered in by the manufacture of power. Once he has thought about that subject he is ready to think more clearly and more broadly about the aims of engineering education. It is impossible to educate a man without his consent. It is impossible to educate him broadly if what he wants is only the narrow rules-of-thumb which might fit him to follow a trade but which are inadequate to the demands of a liberal and intellectual profession. Hence the importance of having a student read thoughtfully at the very outset of his career what the leaders of the profession have said about the true aims of engineering education.

These topics lead directly to the question of the relation between pure science and applied, and that problem leads straight to the central one of the relation of science to literature and of the part which each plays in education not merely in the education which fits. a man for the practice of his profession but also in that solution of the great mysteries of life which each man must seek for himself. The student who has followed

the train of thought so far should have a new point of view toward literature, a point of view which will enable him to see in it not something alien to all his work and interests, nor merely an elegant amusement for his idle hours, but rather a body of thought bearing in a thousand ways upon his scientific studies and his relations with other men.

The final section, "Literature and Life," offers definite illustrations of literature as a comment on life. The essays which could be included are only a few from a very large field and their purpose is merely suggestive, to teach the student to read thoughtfully and to apply what he reads to his own personal life. This section of the book may be taken as a kind of introduction to further and more extended study of literature or to the student's own reading.

This volume is planned for reading in connection with constant discussion and writing. The different essays should be considered as supplying questions and topics for thought. Following the preliminary discussion in class of what any single essay is trying to say, comes the question, What do you think about it? At first the undergraduate will probably have few ideas. But the skillful teacher will find that if he follows question with question, on this side and that, points of view will soon begin to develop in the class-room. If he preserves an atmosphere in which thought is free and if he encourages each tentative opinion, differences will appear and trains of thought will be started which will demand careful statement in writing to do them justice. Here it is that the instructor will find material for oral and written composition, in which the student's reading will furnish stimulus and suggestion but not the

rule or limit for his thought. Themes should never be mere analyses or summaries but rather the expression of individual points of view or the expansion and illustration of single points in the essay under discussion, with direct reference to the life of the student and the problems of his own education.

Once interest is aroused in this way, correctness in writing is comparatively easy to achieve. For one thing the student who is interested in what he has to say, who feels that he is exploring new ground, will write more carefully than he does when he is merely trying to produce a "theme." And when he is eager to say as well as possible what he thinks, he will remember any suggestions that are made as to form. For the teaching of matters of form there is no economy equal to having a student interested in the ideas he is trying to express. The whole matter between form and content is one of emphasis. The wise teacher will never lose an opportunity to help his students in the attainment of correctness in language, and at the same time he will never fail to make clear to them that the sole justification of care in language is the adequate expression of thought so that it will be easily and pleasantly understandable to the audience they wish to reach.

The objection may be made to this entire program that thinking is one of those things which cannot be taught. The teacher of English composition, such an objector would say, must take his students as they are, teach them to express in language such thoughts as they have, and be content with that. He cannot hope to teach them to think beyond their natural capacities

and above the innate ideas and prejudices of their class and position, which they have when they come to him. It must be admitted that there is a color of truth in this objection. There is no magic formula, no program of the development of separate "faculties which can be combined to produce the power of thought. But while thinking cannot in this sense be taught, it can be stimulated; the student's tentative attempts can be questioned and criticized in such a manner as to develop his mental power or to enable him to develop it for himself. The first of all requisites for this is that the teacher should himself be thinking with the class. Their minds will catch the flame from his. Then the questions which he is discussing with them must be such as to call forth the best efforts of his mind and theirs. Pre-digested mental food will not strengthen the mental power of assimilation any more than pre-digested physical food will the bodily. And, finally, the teacher must drop the rôle of master and assume that of the seeker after truth. His method must be that of Socrates, that of the "intellectual midwife," presiding over the birth of ideas. The triumph of his art will be "in thoroughly examining whether the thought which the mind of the young man brings forth is a false idol or a noble and true birth." Like Socrates he must arouse in his patients the pains and perplexity and travail of thought. Like Socrates he must be resolute in exposing the false opinion when it has been brought forth. Like Socrates, however, he must do this by appealing not to authority, either his own or another's or a book's, but by the appeal to reason, by the gentle art of refutation. By such methods will the teacher be able to awaken his pupils and to