THE TELEPHONE. 743 



speaking, but if we force him, in his present immature state, to exert his voice 

 beyond what is good for him, it may sound rather too like the pot quarrelling 

 with the kettle, and may call for the criticism with which Mr Tennyson's 

 Princess complimented the disguised Prince on his " Song of the Swallow : " 







"Not for thee, she said, 

 O Bulbul, any rose of Gulistan 

 Shall burst her veil: marsh divers rather, maid, 

 Shall croak thee sister, or the meadow crake 

 Grate her harsh kindred in the grass." 



Is it for this, then, that we are to forsake the luncheons and lawn tennis 

 and all the engrossing studies of the May Term, and to assemble in this 

 solemn hall, where the very air seems thick with the accumulation of unsolved 

 problems, or else redolent of the graces of innumerable congregations ? 



It is not by concentrating our minds on any problem, however important, 

 but rather by encouraging them to expand, that we shall best fulfil the intention 

 of Sir Robert Rede when he founded this lecture. 



It would be as useless as it would be tedious to try to explain the 

 various parts of this small instrument to persons in every part of the Senate 

 House. I shall, therefore, consider the telephone as a material symbol of the 

 widely separated departments of human knowledge, the cultivation of which has 

 led, by as many converging paths, to the invention of this instrument by 

 Professor Graham Bell. 



For whatever may be said about the importance of aiming at depth 

 rather than width in our studies, and however strong the demand of the present 

 age may be for specialists, there will always be work, not only for those who 

 build up particular sciences and write monographs on them, but for those who 

 open up such communications between the different groups of builders as will 

 facilitate a healthy interaction between them. And in a university we are 

 especially bound to recognise not only the unity of science itself, but the 

 communion of the workers in science. We are too apt to suppose that we are 

 congregated here merely to be within reach of certain appliances of study, such 

 as museums and laboratories, libraries and lecturers, so that each of us may 

 study what he prefers. I suppose that when the bees crowd round the flowers 

 it is for the sake of the honey that they do so, never thinking that it is 

 the dust which they are carrying from flower to flower which is to render 



