UNIVERSITY EDUCATION AND NATIONAL LIFE. 657 



tribute to this purpose by providing certain options in the science 

 curriculum; that is, a given number of scientific subjects being pre- 

 scribed for study with a view to the degree of B.Sc., the candidate is 

 allowed to substitute for one of these a subject taken from the arts 

 curriculum, such, for instance, as the theory and practise of education. 

 This is the case in the University of Wales and in the University of 

 Birmingham; and there are indications, I believe, that this example 

 will be followed elsewhere. Considering how hard and sustained is 

 the work exacted from students of science, pure or applied, it seems 

 important that the subjects from which they are to derive their literary 

 culture should be presented to them, not in a dry-as-dust fashion, not 

 chiefly as subjects of examination, but rather as sources of recreation 

 and changes of mental activity. From this point of view, for British 

 students of science the best literature of the English language offers 

 unequaled advantages. It may be mentioned that the board of edu- 

 cation in London is giving particular attention to the place which 

 English literature should hold in the examination of students at the 

 training colleges, and has under consideration carefully planned courses 

 of study, in which portions of the best English writers of prose and of 

 verse are prescribed to be read in connection with corresponding periods 

 of English history, it being understood that the study of the literature 

 shall be directed, not to philological or grammatical detail, but to the 

 substance and meaning of the books, and to the leading characteristics 

 of each writer's style. If, on the other hand, the student is to derive 

 his literary culture, wholly or in part, from a foreign literature, ancient 

 or modern, then it will be most desirable that, before leaving school, 

 he should have surmounted the initial difficulties of grammar, and 

 should have learned to read the foreign language with tolerable ease. 



When we look at this problem — how to combine the scientific and 

 the literary elements of culture — in the light of existing or prospective 

 conditions in South Africa, it appears natural to suppose that, in a 

 teaching university, the faculty of education would be that with which 

 literary studies would be more particularly connected. And if students 

 of practical sciences, such as engineering and agriculture, were brought 

 together at the same center where the faculty of education had its seat, 

 then it should not be difficult, without unduly trenching on the time 

 demanded by scientific or technical studies, to provide such students 

 with facilities for some measure of good literary training. 



A further subject is necessarily suggested by that with which we 

 have been dealing- — I mean the relation of university to secondary edu- 

 cation ; but on that I can only touch very briefly. Before university 

 education can be widely efficient, it is indispensable that secondary 

 education should be fairly well developed and organized. Secondary 

 education should be intelligent — liberal in spirit — not too much tram- 



vor.. lxvii. — 41. 



