OXFORD ON THE UPPER GRADE n 



presents it. Hence it is that so much of our modern teaching 

 is sterile. 



Matthew Arnold has contended that " in the England of 

 Shakespeare, the poet lived in a current of ideas in the highest 

 degree animating and nourishing to the creative power ; society 

 was, in the fullest measure, permeated by fresh thought, 

 intelligent and alive ; and this state of things (he says) is the 

 true basis for the creative power's exercise, in this it finds its 

 data, its materials, truly ready for its hand ; all the books and 

 reading in the world are only valuable as they are helps to 

 this." As remarked by " Jim " in one of the letters in An 

 Oxford Correspondence, " Books may be made for men but I 

 deny that man was made lor books " — the corollary to which 

 perhaps is that men made by books alone are not men. 



The evolutionary wave which swept over us and permanently 

 changed the direction of thought throughout the civilised world 

 now nearly half a century ago has in a measure spent its 

 vivifying force: to carry it forward again society needs to be 

 made more intelligent and alive, to be permeated by thought, 

 not merely by fresh thought ; science, using the term in its 

 broadest sense, alone can accomplish this end and it rests with 

 the Universities to convey the message which science carries. 

 But we must not expect too much. Again to quote Arnold : 

 " The mass of mankind will never have any ardent zeal for 

 seeing things as they are ; very inadequate ideas will always 

 satisfy them. On these inadequate ideas reposes and must repose 

 the general practice of the world. That is as much as saying 

 that whoever sets himself to see things as they are will find 

 himself one of a very small circle ; but it is only by this small 

 circle resolutely doing its own work that adequate ideas will 

 ever get current at all." The two ancient Universities are the 

 small circles from which the wavelets must ripple outwards. 



The growth of adequate ideas, of ideas adequate to the 

 complex conditions of our modern civilisation, should be fostered 

 by them. If they do not soon succeed in discharging their office 

 in a manner more worthy of the position they have inherited 

 from the past, their work can but end in failure and their 

 continued failure must have most serious consequences ; there- 

 fore the public cannot allow them to fail and must demand their 

 revivification as centres of thought and of ideas. 



Nothing is more desirable in the way of University reform 



