284 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



which possess a laboratory," mathematics in part and literature alto- 

 gether must be given \\^. It would be waste of words to point out 

 the fatal tendency of this separative process ; to show how mere lin- 

 guistic training needs the rationalizing aid of scientific study, or how 

 exclusive science hardens and materializes without the refining society 

 of literature ; yet sucl^ divorce is inevitably due not to the convictions 

 of school-masters, not to the influence of parents, not to the preposses- 

 sions of the public, but to the irresistible force of the university sys- 

 tem, which makes narrowness of intelligence and imperfect knowledge 

 the only avenues to distinction or to profit. 



It is true that an attempt to alter this involves little short of a 

 revolution ; but by all accounts a revolution is at hand. It is not for 

 nothing that a parliamentary investigation into the expenditure of 

 college endowments should have been supported by members of the 

 colleges themselves, or that a proposal to distribute college scholar- 

 ships and exhibitions by a central authority in accordance with the 

 results of the leaving-examination should have emanated from emi- 

 nent university teachers. For it cannot be too strongly urged that 

 college scholarships stand on very different ground from university 

 prizes or degrees. It is easy for Parliament to lay down rules which 

 shall control the latter once for all ; it is not easy to bind the actions of 

 some forty different foundations, each electing its own scholars accord- 

 ing to its own idiosyncrasies, or in obedience to the changing wills of 

 bodies in a perpetual state of flux. It may still be audacious, but it 

 is no longer novel, to suggest that, supposing future legislation to re- 

 tain the college scholai'ships at all, they should be awarded by the 

 authority of government, in strict connection with leaving-examina- 

 tions which government shall conduct, and in reward not of special 

 but of general proficiency. For this the scheme of the commission- 

 ers virtually contends; into regions beyond this the report l)efore us 

 necessarily does not enter. 



It will be seen that we accept, and recommend all teachers to ac- 

 cept, the scheme of the commissioners unreservedly as a working basis 

 of educational improvement. It may not be ideally jjerfect ; it may 

 invite opposition on points of detnil ; but it is the resultant of all the 

 intellectual forces which have hitherto been brought to bear upon the 

 subject ; and, while agreeing with all its witnesses on the principle 

 that wide general training should precede specialization of study, it 

 attains extreme simplicity of arrangement by allotting the first of 

 these to the schools and the last to the universities. Do not let us 

 forget that the cry which has arisen hitherto from all the head-masters 

 on the point of scientific teaching has been a cry for guidance ; for 

 commanding and intelligent leadership ; for authoritative enlighten- 

 ment as to the relative value and the judicious sequence of scientific 

 subjects ; for information as to text-books, apparatus, teachers. For 

 the first time this cry is met by an oracle whose authority no one will 



