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Mitchell, P. Chalmers (Peter Chalmers), 1864-1945

"Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work"

The first great object, then, in promoting science so as to
reap the most direct national advantage from it, was to encourage
science in its highest and widest forms. It cannot be said that
England has yet learned this lesson. The number of institutions in
Germany where advanced investigation is continuously pursued is
absolutely and relatively greater than the number in England.
The second part of technical education is that to which general
attention is more commonly given. It consists of the kind of training
to be given to the great army of workers in the country. In regard to
this, as in regard to research work, Huxley insisted on the absence of
distinction between technical or applied science and science without
such a limiting prefix. So far as technical instruction meant definite
teaching of a handicraft, he believed that it could be learned
satisfactorily only in the workshop itself.
"The workshop is the only real school for a handicraft. The
education which precedes that of the workshop should be entirely
devoted to the strengthening of the body, the elevation of the
moral faculties, and the cultivation of the intelligence; and,
especially, to the imbuing of the mind with a broad and clear
view of the laws of that natural world with the components of
which the handicraftsman will have to deal.


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