"The true and only practicable object of a polytechnic school is, as I conceive, the teaching, not of the minute details and manipulations of the arts, which can be done only in the workshop, but the inculcation of those scientific principles which form the basis and explanation of them, and along with this, a full and methodical review of all their leading processes and operations in connection with physical laws. When thus instructed in applied science, the mechanician, chemist or manufacturer, clearly comprehending the agencies of the materials and instruments with which he works, is saved from the disasters of blind experiment, guided securely because understandingly in a profitable routine, or directed to the contrivance of new and more efficient combinations."