1892 LONDON UNIVERSITY REFORM 329 



ing a College de France on to the University of London, subsi- 

 dising University College and King's College (if it will get rid 

 of its tests, not otherwise), and setting up two or three more 

 such bodies in other parts of London. (Scotland, with a smaller 

 population than London, has four complete universities ! ) 



I should hand over the whole business of medical education 

 and graduation to a medical universitas to be constituted by the 

 royal colleges and medical schools, whose doings, of course, 

 would be checked by the Medical Council. 



Our side has been too apt to look upon medical schools as 

 feeders for Science. They have been so, but to their detriment 

 as medical schools. And now that so man}- opportunities for 

 purely scientific training are afforded, there is no reason they 

 should remain so. 



The problem of the Medical University is to make an aver- 

 age man into a good practical doctor before he is twenty-two, 

 and with not more expense than can be afforded by the class 

 from which doctors are recruited, or than will be rewarded by 

 the prospect of an income of 400 to 500 a year. 



It is not right to sacrifice such men, and the public on whom 

 they practise, for the prospect of making i per cent of medical 

 students into men of science. Ever yours very faithfully, 



T. H. HUXLEY. 



An undated draft in his own handwriting (probably the 

 draft of a speech delivered the first time he came to the 

 committee as President, October 26) expands the same idea 

 as to the modern requirements of the University : 



The cardinal fact in the University question appears to me 

 to be this : that the student to whose wants the mediaeval Uni- 

 versity was adjusted, looked to the past and sought book-learn- 

 ing, while the modern looks to the future and seeks the knowl- 

 edge of things. 



The mediaeval view was that all knowledge worth having 

 w r as explicitly or implicitly contained in various ancient writ- 

 ings ; in the Scriptures, in the writings of the greater Greeks, 

 and those of the Christian Fathers. Whatever apparent novelty 

 they put forward, was professedly obtained by deduction from 

 ancient data. 



The modern knows that the only source of real knowledge 

 lies in the application of scientific methods of inquiry to the 

 ascertainment of the facts of existence; that the ascertainable 



