NA TURE 



453 



THURSDAY, MARCH 20, 1879 



ROYAL AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE, 

 CIRENCESTER 



DURIN G the last few years the question of Agricultural 

 Education has been very fully and fruitfully dis- 

 cussed. The experiment of an examination in the prin- 

 ciples of agriculture, under the Science and Art Depart- 

 ment, had an unexpected success ; and showed that there 

 was throughout the kingdom a demand for instruction in 

 agricultural matters. At the present moment efforts are 

 being made to satisfy this demand more completely by 

 means of local organisation for developing and extending 

 the facilities already offered by the Science and Art 

 Department. 



There is at Cirencester a college founded specially for 

 the advancement of agricultural education. It has one — 

 or more — Royal Charters ; it has the power of granting 

 diplomas ; it is under Royal patronage, and has the 

 ad\'antage of being managed by nvunerous Earls and 

 M.P.s. This institution ought to (and might) have been 

 the centre of the movement to which allusion has been 

 made ; but, unfortunately, its own troubles seem to be 

 enough to occupy the whole attention of the Committee of 

 Management ; and, for the second time in the history of 

 the college, threaten to bring about its extinction. For 

 the past few weeks the agricultural press has been teeming 

 with letters and articles headed " Professor Church and 

 the Ro)-al Agricultural College." The facts, as to which 

 there seems to be no dispute, are briefly these : — Prof. 

 Church is about to be married. Other professors, his 

 colleagues and juniors, had done the same, and non- 

 residence in their cases was not found incompatible with 

 the proper performance of their several duties ; as a matter 

 of fact each of Prof Church's predecessors was non-resident- 

 Yet the Principal intimated to Prof Church that without 

 residence he could " no longer discharge the duties of Pro- 

 fessor of Chemistry in this college." It appeared that this 

 decision on the part of the Principal was not authorised 

 under the bye-laws : such a point could ^be determined 

 only by the Committee of Management ; and the case 

 was referred to them. The result was, however, un- 

 altered. WTiile "fully sensible of the services rendered 

 by Prof. Church during his sixteen years' residence in the 

 College," the Committee " regret that they cannot accede 

 to his recent proposal of non-residence." The conse- 

 quence of this was two resignations. Prof. Lloyd Tanner 

 regarding the decision " as showing that neither long and 

 zealous performance of duty, nor special ability for work 

 are duly recognised," has resigned the Chair of Jlathe- 

 matics and Physics ; and Prof. Fream, " as the only 

 protest it is in his power to make against the treatment 

 his colleague has received," similarly vacates the Chair 

 of Natiiral History. 



Such are the circumstances under which the three 

 senior resident professors at Cirencester College are 

 leaving. Other matters have rendered the affair even 

 more painful than it need have been, but we believe the 

 simple, imdisputed facts of the case are amply sufficient 

 to enable our readers to form a just opinion of the mode 

 of managing Cirencester College. Those who intend to 

 become candidates for the vacant chair have had an 

 Vol. XIX.— No. 490 



opportunity of judging how one bye-law can be and is 

 used against a man such as Prof. Church ; we will only 

 advise them to study the other bye-laws and guess how 

 they may be used against younger and less known men- 

 Having seen these bye-laws ourselves we are curious to 

 know who will be induced to replace the vacancies just 

 announced. 



PROF. HUXLEY'S HUME 



•Hume. By Prof. Huxley. (London : Macmillan and 



Co., 1879.) 



PROF, HUXLEY has given a clear and succinct 

 account of the philosophy of Hume, in a style at 

 once fresh and pointed. We should be thankful to him 

 that, following the example of Locke and Hume himself, 

 he discusses philosophical questions in genuine and 

 idiomatic English, and consistently avoids the use of a 

 lumbering phraseology, imported from abroad, amid 

 which the thinking evaporates, for the most part, in pure 

 verbalism. The volume before us is limited to a brief 

 account of Hume's life and his philosophical opinions. 

 It hardly touches what has been said on the other side 

 in criticism or in correction of Hume's views. Here 

 and there Prof. Huxley offers a criticism; but, though 

 generally acute, it is seldom on anything but a point of 

 detail. Indeed, the volume may be described as rather 

 too much of a bare statement of Hume's principles and 

 conclusions. 



As Prof. Huxley may fairly be regarded as dogmati- 

 cally accepting Hume's principles and boldly carrying 

 them out to their results, while Hiune may with proba- 

 bility be regarded as having only hypothetically held the 

 principles, we might have expected a fuller vindication 

 of them than is at all attempted in the volume. On aU 

 the metaphysical questions of greatest moment Prof. 

 Huxley's position is a negative one ; and if, as it seems, 

 he accepts Hume's principles absolutely, it is one of 

 complete negation. 



In the opening chapter on the Philosophy (Chap. II.) 

 Prof. Huxley has done good service in clearly stating the 

 terms of the question. He very properly points out that 

 the question regarding the limits of knowledge, or 

 "What we can know," is not a primary but a secondary 

 question. He is emphatic in showing that it implies the 

 previous questions as to what we mean by knowledge, 

 and how we come by the thing we call knowledge. And 

 he very well points out that these latter questions are 

 psychological, and that psychology, accordingly, is the 

 only proper basis of assertions about knowledge, 

 whether these refer to its nature, conditions, or limits.. 

 This clear and vigorous statement is not inopportime, 

 for there is somewhat of a tendency at present, very in- 

 consistently indeed, to ignore psychology. We have 

 professions of "deducing" the conditions of "expe- 

 rience." It seems strange that it does not occur to the 

 advocates of such a method that its basis is necessarily 

 an accurate examination of what experience or conscious- 

 ness in its fullest extent is ; what, in a word, is the thing 

 spoken of, whose conditions it is proposed to evolve. 

 This implies a full and scientific psychology — the only- 

 safeguard against fantastic system-making, otherwise the 

 so-called " deduction " becomes a method of if and must 



