5© THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



for Plato and Aristotle taught and philosophized. If you do not make 

 the investigator a schoolmaster, as Dalton was, and as practically 

 our professors are at the present time, with the duty of teaching all 

 branches of their sciences, the mere elementary truths as well as the 

 highest generalizations being compressed into a course, it is well that 

 they should be brought into contact with the world in which they live, 

 so as to know its wants and aspirations. They could then quicken the 

 pregnant minds around them, and extend to others their own power 

 and love of research. Goethe had a tine perception of this when he 



wrote : 



" Wer in der Weltgeschichte lebt, 

 Wer in die Zeiten schaut, und strebt, 

 Nur der ist wertb, zu sprecben und zu dicbten." 



Our universities are still far from the attainment of a proper com- 

 bination of their resources between teaching and research. Even Ox- 

 ford and Cambridge, which have done so much in recent years in the 

 equipment of laboratories and in adding to their scientific staff, are 

 still far behind a second-class German university. The professional 

 faculties of the English universities are growing, and will diffuse a 

 greater taste for science among their students, though they may absorb 

 the time of the limited professoriate so as to prevent it advancing the 

 boundaries of knowledge. Professional faculties are absolutely essen- 

 tial to the existence of universities in poor countries like Scotland and 

 Ireland. This has been the case from the early days of the Bologna 

 University up to the present time. Originally universities arose not 

 by mere bulls of popes, but as a response to the strong desire of the 

 professional classes to dignify their crafts by real knowledge. If their 

 education had been limited to mere technical schools, like the Medical 

 School of Salerno, which flourished in the eleventh century, length 

 but not breadth would have been given to education. So the univer- 

 sities wisely joined culture to the professional sciences. Poor countries 

 like Scotland and Ireland must have their academic systems based on 

 the professional faculties, although wealthy universities like Oxford 

 and Cambridge may continue to have them as mere supplements to a 

 more general education. A greater liberality of support on the part 

 of the state in the establishment of chairs of science, for the sake of 

 science and not merely for the teaching of the professions, would enable 

 the poorer universities to take their part in the advancement of knowl- 

 edge. 



I have already alluded to the foundation of new colleges in differ- 

 ent parts of the kingdom. Owens College has worthily developed into 

 the Victoria University. Formerly she depended for degrees on the 

 University of London. Ko longer will she be like a moon reflecting 

 cold and sickly rays from a distant luminary, for in future she will be 

 a sun, a center of intelligence, warming and illuminating the regions 

 around her. The other colleges which have formed themselves in 



