650 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



South Africa should possess an institution, or institutions, of university 

 rank, which, besides examining, should also teach. That is a natural 

 progress, which is illustrated by the recent reconstitution of the Lon- 

 don University itself. I am not qualified, nor should I desire, to dis- 

 cuss the various difficulties of detail which surround the question of a 

 teaching university. That question is, for South Africa, an eminently 

 practical one; and doubtless it will be solved, possibly at no distant 

 time, by those who are most competent to deal with it. I will only 

 venture to say a few words on some of the more general aspects of the 

 matter. 



The primary needs of daily life in a new country make demands for 

 certain forms of higher training — demands which may be unable to 

 wait for the development of anything so complex and costly as a teach- 

 ing university. It is necessary to provide a training for men who shall 

 be able to supervise the building of houses, the making of roads, bridges 

 and railways, and to direct skilled labor in various useful arts and 

 handicrafts. The first step in such a provision is to establish technical 

 schools and institutes. Germany is, I suppose, the country where the 

 educational possibilities of the technical school are realized in the 

 amplest measure. In Germany the results of the highest education 

 are systematically brought to bear on all the greater industries. But 

 this highest education is not given only in completely equipped univer- 

 sities which confer degrees. It is largely given in the institutions 

 known as technical high schools. In these schools teaching of a univer- 

 sity standard is given, by professors of university rank, in subjects such 

 as architecture, various branches of engineering, chemistry and general 

 technical science. There are, I think, some ten or eleven of these tech- 

 nical high schools in Germany. In these institutions the teaching of 

 the special art or science, on its theoretical side, is carried, I believe, to 

 a point as high as could be attained in a university ; while on the prac- 

 tical side it is carried beyond the point which in a university would 

 usually be possible. In England we have nothing, I believe, which 

 properly corresponds to the German technical high school ; but we may 

 expect to see some of the functions of such a school included among 

 the functions of the new universities in our great industrial and com- 

 mercial towns. 



Now technical schools or institutes, which do not reach the level of 

 a German technical high school, may, nevertheless, be so planned as to 

 be capable of being further developed as parts of a great teaching uni- 

 versity. And the point which I now wish to note is this — that the 

 higher education given in a technical institute, which is only such, will 

 not be quite the same as that given in the corresponding department of 

 a teaching university. University education, as such, when it is effi- 

 cient, has certain characteristics which differentiate it from the train- 



