AN IMPERIAL INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE 687 



colleges and schools, would form as it were woof to web in the 

 fabric of a real University. 



The stuff of which any University is formed consists of men 

 and women ; they are at present organised on College lines ; 

 what is required to knit them together into a University fabric 

 is a further organisation on Faculty lines. This further organi- 

 sation is by no means difficult of accomplishment ; its lines are 

 already laid down in Boards of Studies, and the financial sup- 

 port, without which no policy or enterprise can be sustained, 

 is not of any forbidding magnitude. University research 

 fellowships, tenable by recognised teachers of the University, 

 would afford a means of forming from the Boards and Faculties 

 lists or panels in various subjects, the members of which as 

 " research fellows of the University " should be liable, when 

 called upon, to deliver at the head-quarters of the University 

 courses of lectures on subjects of which their own investigations 

 had rendered them authoritative exponents. It is during the 

 first ten or fifteen years of his teaching career that the teacher's 

 mental activity is keenest and that his quality is made apparent. 

 I would, if funds permitted, definitely recognise and encourage 

 the development of power of such a teacher, by the allocation to 

 him of a research fellowship that should be expected to occupy 

 half his working time, and to supply him with half his living 

 wage, and that should cause him to bring to the central lecture 

 theatre of the University real additions to knowledge, and to 

 the lecture theatre of his school augmented mastery of the 

 subject he has to teach. I can imagine no condition of life more 

 enviable than that of a keen-brained man or woman during the 

 best ten years of intellectual life, from, say, the age of twenty- 

 five to that of thirty-five, in receipt of a salary of £200 for 

 teaching during half the week and of a fellowship of ,£200 for 

 " researching " during the other half. I am convinced that 

 under such conditions of life the return in teaching power 

 would repay the outlay in money, and that from among the 

 workers thus supported the exceptional man or woman would 

 be far more likely to emerge than is the case under our present 

 conditions. 



Quite independently of the interests of the exceptional mind 

 — which being exceptional cannot be expected to be of frequent 

 occurrence — it is by the general levelling-up influence to be 

 secured by the encouragement of individuality of thought 



