301 ill \ikh \ AM) Mil i NDERC.RADUATE. 257 



difference is a matter of lit'*- or death to our children who e 

 trustees we are? \xt we so blind that we will not » thai a 

 liberal Education, and not a factional ignorance, is the onl) force 

 that will keep intait tin heritage of our father-' These arc- no 

 mere rhetorical questions, but hlunt questions that call for an 

 honest answer. 



The Site of i he I Fniversity. 



Assuming, then, that the spirit of common-sense will, sooner 

 or later, touch the minds of our people, and that they will sink 

 their petty mti and that there will arise a National desire 



for a National University, where are we to lay the foundation 

 -tone;- Many voice- will be heard in reply. There is but one 

 place. Beneath the shadow of Table Mountain lies the cradle of 

 the Races. Thai majestic sentinel, inscrutable as the Sphinx, has 

 ed down upon the galleon of Van Riebeeck and the "" Good 

 Hope" of Victoria. fl<- has listened to the tramp of victorious 

 legions as they have moved into the Elinterland. Whatever we 

 have of tradition and of "atmosphere" i- centred about him: 

 and tradition and atmosphere are two potent forces in moulding 

 a National ideal— the one i- the mother of a fine sentiment; the 

 other of a humane and liberal outlook. There is nothing 1 

 about Table Mountain: In i - spiril is magnanimous, his vision 

 limitless, bis repose perfect, his beauty unequalled. As a Uni- 

 ty centre he offer- conditions and a setting thai rival tl 

 which embowered the Lyceum of Aristotle and the Academy of 

 Plato. And we ask: "Is it an idle dream to think that the Cape 

 nsula may be Athens of South Africa — that Athens 



whose -pirit is yet a force in twentieth-century civilisation?" 

 It may be an idle dream to say that it may become, but that r 

 heroine may be emphatically asserted. Lei us not forget that 

 Athens wa- not built in a day. and that it did not reach the fulness 

 of its glory in its youth. VVe are a young nation, and to those 

 who contemptuously ask: "What has South Africa done?" we 

 would replv: "It * England five hundred year- from the 



Norman Conquest to produce a Shakespeare, and a thousand 

 years from the accession of Alfred the Great before England's 

 ruler- considered Englishmen sufficiently educated to grant every 

 citizen the franchise." Who knows but that our Athens may 

 produce a Socrates and a Solon whose disciples, inspired by a 

 -pirit not of mean utilitarianism but of an enlightened - : ' 

 ship and statesman shio. mav happily solve a problem greater than 

 any Athens ever had to solve— our Native Question ' 



The Edu< vtion of the Undergraduate. 



Given such surroundings and such an atmosphere, it would 



be a perfectly sound argument to ; that the education of 



our Undergraduate would undergo, sua sponte, a radical and a 

 particularly wholesome change. He would no longer be the help- 



