8 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



every day — it is only too clear that the breadth and depth of 

 understanding which are required to appreciate and cope with 

 the complexities of modern civilisation are often altogether 

 lacking in our officials. And not only in officials — as the higher 

 journalism has also been very largely captured by Oxford, in 

 consequence of the attention which is lavished there on the 

 development of literary smartness and style. 



The tendency referred to has undoubtedly been at work in the 

 old Universities and is probably one of the chief causes of their 

 comparative inefficiency. The control of affairs has fallen 

 almost entirely into the hands of the literary class — the more 

 practical and active minded students, whose influence would 

 have been of such infinite importance, have been in no way 

 attracted by the narrow choice of intellectual food which has 

 been offered to them and have only availed themselves of the 

 invaluable social training imparted at the University ; these 

 latter have gone out into the world and in virtue of their social 

 qualities have helped us exceedingly but their power for good 

 has necessarily been limited, owing to the narrowness of their 

 education and their consequent inability to understand, let 

 alone master, the problems with which they have been con- 

 fronted. Our picture was clearly painted long ago by Matthew 

 Arnold, after Heine, in an eloquent passage in which he calls 

 attention to the poet's contempt for British narrowness. 



" In truth, the English, profoundly as they have modified the 

 old Middle-Age order, great as is the liberty which they have 

 secured for themselves, have in all their changes proceeded, to 

 use a familiar expression, by rule of thumb ; what was intolerably 

 inconvenient to them they have suppressed and as they have 

 suppressed it, not because it was irrational but because it was 

 practically inconvenient, they have seldom in suppressing it 

 appealed to reason but always, if possible, to some precedent 

 or form or letter which served as a convenient instrument for 

 their purpose and which saved them from the necessity of 

 recurring to general principles. They have thus become, in 

 a certain sense, of all people the most inaccessible to ideas and 

 the most impatient of them ; inaccessible to them, because of 

 their want of familiarity with them ; and impatient of them 

 because they have got on so well without them, that they 

 despise those who, not having got on as well as themselves, 

 still make a fuss for what they themselves have done so well 

 without. But there has certainly followed from hence, in this 

 country, somewhat of a general depression of pure intelligence : 



