good manual worker unless he has been accustomed to the good methods of handicraft altogether. He must grow accustomed to conceive the subject of his thoughts in a concrete form, to draw it, or to model, to hate badly kept tools and bad methods of work, to give to everything a fine touch of finish, to derive artistic enjoyment from the contemplation of gracious forms and combinations of colours, and dissatisfaction from what is ugly. Be it handicraft, science, or art, the chief aim of the school is not to make a specialist from a beginner, but to teach him the elements of knowledge and the good methods of work, and, above all, to give him that general inspiration which will induce him, later on, to put in whatever he does a sincere longing for truth, to like what is beautiful, both as to form and contents, to feel the necessity of being a useful unit amidst other human units, and thus to feel his heart at unison with the rest of humanity.
As for avoiding the monotony of work which would result from the pupil always mere cylinders and discs, and never making full machines or other useful things, there are thousands of means for avoiding that want of interest, and one of them, in use at Moscow, is worthy of notice. It was, not to give work for mere exercise, but to utilise everything which the pupil makes, from his very first steps. Do you remember how you were delighted, in your childhood, if your work was utilised, be it only as a part of something useful? So they did at Moscow. Each plank planed by the pupils was utilised as a part of some machine in some of the other workshops. When a pupil came to the engineering workshop, and was set to make a quadrangular block of iron with parallel and perpendicular surfaces, the block had an interest in his eyes, because, when he had finished it, verified its angles and surfaces, and corrected its defects, the block was not thrown under the bench — it was given to a more advanced pupil, who made a handle to it, painted the whole, and sent it to the shop of the school as a paper-weight. The systematical teaching thus received the necessary attractiveness. 192