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Exhibition (1851) Scholarships, and Rhodes Scholarships. Not only are details of 

 the colleges provided, but also a list of the holders of offices in them. At a time 

 when we are in closer touch with our Colonies than perhaps ever before, such a 

 book is most opportune, and, indeed, it would be a magnificent thing for the future 

 of the Empire if the universities themselves could be brought more closely 

 together. The various colleges are still to a large extent isolated, and nothing 

 but good would result from their being more firmly knit. Several points need 

 immediate attention. The existing pension scheme of the universities of Great 

 Britain could, with comparatively little modification and adaptation to local 

 conditions, be extended to the whole Empire, and would be a large step in the 

 direction of a freer interchange of their staffs. Some move should also be made 

 in the matter of a fuller recognition of the examinations and degrees of other 

 universities. This would probably mean a certain amount of standardisation of 

 the examination, again making allowance for local conditions, but would be of 

 enormous benefit. 



These points are, of course, not dealt with in the present volume, but must 

 inevitably occur to any one who uses it. After our daughter nations have sealed 

 their allegiance to the mother country on the battlefield it would be little short of 

 a calamity if they were to be allowed to drift away again, and any closer union 

 of the various university institutions would undoubtedly be a very strong link to 

 hold the countries together. 



Once again we must congratulate the Universities Bureau on a useful book 

 which is singularly free from slips, and whose information, so far as we have been 

 able to check it, is accurate. 



C. H. O'D. 



W. E.Ford: A Biography. By T. S. Beresford and Kenneth Richmond. 

 [Pp. vii + 310, with photogravure frontispiece.] (London : W. Collins, 1917. 

 Price 6s. net.) 



The need that is gradually making itself felt in Science for unification and 

 synthesis between the individual sciences is extending to all branches of civilisa- 

 tion, and even to civilisation itself. Analysis, no doubt, is essential to the develop- 

 ment of knowledge, but practised by itself it inevitably leads to the creation of 

 water-tight compartments, unless subordinated to the final process of redintegration 

 in the corpus of human knowledge. This fissipareous tendency has in the past 

 played havoc with education, unduly isolating subject from subject, and often 

 totally obscuring the unifying aim of the school to which, if it exists, these 

 subjects should be ancillary. These reproaches cannot be levelled against the 

 highly interesting educational experiments described in the purported biography 

 of W. E. Ford. Here at least, whether real or imaginary, was a school given over 

 neither to the excessive cult of subjects nor the memorising of facts, but to the 

 understanding and relating of the latter. They were treated in such a way as to 

 lead to their forming a more or less coherent whole in the pupil's mind, the 

 ultimate aim of the education given being to make the knowledge thus intelli- 

 gently mastered an instrument of culture and self-expression, the whole being 

 linked on to a doctrine of vitalism of the Bergsonian type, which space forbids 

 setting forth here. 



In opposition to the ordinary public schools, " mere mental and physical 

 tanneries," according to Ford's father, Ford set up a school for both sexes. From 

 the outset the pupils were taught by practice that all knowledge is only approxi- 

 mate, and that knowledge gained is but a stepping-stone to the acquisition of 



