422 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



" And thus, the tide being high, the Bishop went into 

 harbour at the top of the flood. I don't even complain of the 

 nature of the address ; it was, frankly, such as might have been 

 given by a Sadducee in the time of Christ. But the interesting 

 thing about it was that most of the people present believed 

 it to be an ethical and even a religious address. It was the 

 ethic of a professional bowler and the religion of a banker." 



Finally, I bethought me of the practices followed by those 

 strange people whose doings are so well described in Samuel 

 Butler's Erewhon, as related in the chapters on their Colleges 

 of Unreason. You may be comforted, as I have been, by the 

 comments of the visitor to these Colleges : 



" Perhaps, after all, it is better for a country that its seats 

 of learning shall do more to suppress mental growth than to 

 encourage it. Were it not for a certain priggishness which 

 these places infuse into so great a number of their alumni, 

 genuine work would become dangerously common. It is 

 essential that by far the greater part of what is said or done 

 in the world should be so ephemeral as to take itself away 

 quickly ; it should keep good for twenty-four hours or even 

 twice as long; but it should not be good enough a week hence 

 to prevent people from going on to something else. No doubt 

 the marvellous development of journalism in England, as also 

 the fact that our seats of learning aim rather at fostering 

 mediocrity than anything higher, is due to our unconscious 

 recognition of the fact that it is even more necessary to check 

 exuberance of mental development than to encourage it. There 

 can be no doubt that this is what our academic bodies do, and 

 they do it the more effectually because they do it only sub- 

 consciously. They think they are advancing healthy mental 

 assimilation and digestion, whereas in reality they are little 

 better than cancer in the stomach." 



Not long after I reached home I became aware of signs ot 

 revolt in an unexpected quarter — in Germany, that land of per- 

 fection in all matters educational, according to Mr. Haldane, 

 Prof. Sadler and others, where classics have long ranked 

 with mother's milk. I found that the great Prof. Ostwald, the 

 noted expositor of Ionomania, had written a book on Great 

 Men — only departed ones, at present — in which he contends that 

 classical studies are generally worthless and positively detri- 

 mental to the development of originality. The following pas- 

 sages display his attitude : 



" As at present organised, the school is a machine for the 



