July 28, 192 1] 



NATURE 



695 



The Universities and Technological Education.^ 

 By Prof. A. Smithells, F.R.S. 



NEARLY three centuries ago Robert Boyle came 

 to Oxford aglow with zeal for the pursuit of 

 ■chemistry, a study which he was the first to establish 

 as a science and to endow with the title of a philo- 

 sophy. His work, it appears, aroused bitter 

 animosity ; he was attacked in the University pulpit 

 for his theories and their corrupting influence ; above 

 all, indignation was felt that he, a gentleman by birth 

 and position, should concern himself with low 

 mechanical arts.^ • • 



If times had not greatly changed, the prospect of 

 those coming here to-day to proclaim the University 

 rights, not of pure science, but of technology, would 

 indeed be cheerless. But times have greatly changed, 

 and whilst, as the centuries have passed, the best of 

 the ancient ideals that dominate this illustrious seat 

 of learning have become more precious and inviolate, 

 and whilst the chief glory of the University still lies, 

 I suppose, in the realm of ancient studies, there has 

 been so wide an expansion of intellectual sympathy 

 that to-day natural science is in brilliant display, and 

 technology itself is not only condoned, but in a 

 measure also practised here. 



It is no part of my purpose to urge upon Oxford 

 an extension of this latest province of her work. It 

 would be an impertinence, even if I felt eager, as I 

 do not, to suggest it. But I hope it will not be an 

 impertinence to make into something of a text the 

 historical facts just recalled. I have always thought 

 that our difficulties with technology have arisen chiefly 

 from the belated and stinted cultivation of natural 

 science in the ancient universities. For it is they that 

 have to so large a degree given the law intellectual 

 and set the currents of our education. If natural 

 science as it arose had been gathered to the older 

 studies and had flowed in its natural courses, the 

 mechanical arts and those who follow them would 

 surely have been brought long since into a very 

 difi'erent relation with the academic world. 



Those arts which are first in importance to hungry, 

 naked, and pedestrian man were the last which man 

 learned to imbue with rationality. The succeeding 

 arts, which regulate communal life, gave birth to 

 professions that soon became learned ; the economy 

 and safety of communal life gave leisure for the 

 disport of fancy ; and so it happened that when the 

 range and achievements of man's intellect in the 

 pursuits that relate to human intercourse and to the 

 imagination had already reached such magnificence as 

 to send illumination down the ages, the science that 

 intellectualises the mechanical arts was only just 

 emerging from the close concealment of its material 

 garb. The early promise soon was blighted, and 

 natural knowledge languished through the Middle 

 Ages, leaving industry to make its. progress In the 

 light ^f art, but in the gloom of empiricism. 



When at last science took on rapid growth, when 

 the stir of invention quickened the pace of humanity 

 and we entered upon the riot of the Industrial age, 

 there ensued a period lasting until now when Industry 

 has been struggling, consciously and unconsciously, 

 for its intellectual rights, lacking most grievously the 

 sympathy, the prevision, and the leadership that 

 should have been forthcoming from the established 

 centres of educational influence, the universities. And 

 so we find ourselves in a land that has been forced 



1 From a paper read before the Congress of the Universities of the Empire 

 at Oxford on July 6. 



2 Prof. H. B. Dixon, Address to Section B, British Association Reports, 

 1894 (Oxford), p. 596. 



NO. 2700, VOL. 107] 



to provide for itself as It could Its bread-and-butter 

 studies, its rations of useful knowledge dealt out to 

 the toiler when his day's work is done, its technical 

 schools, commercial academies, colleges of science, 

 and I know not what else, standing outside and in 

 the shade — improper still, I think, in many minds 

 to what is education proper. We are not to blame 

 those who have been busy in this work. "Necessity 

 has no law, and expedience is often one form of 

 necessity. It is no principle with sensible men of 

 whatever cast of opinion to do always what is 

 abstractedly best. Where no direct duty forbids we 

 may be obliged to do, as being best under circum- 

 stances, what we murmur and rise against as we do 

 it. We see that to attempt more is to effect less ; that 

 we must accept so much or gain nothing; and so 

 perforce we reconcile ourselves to what we would have 

 far otherwise If we could ... it may be the least of 

 evils ... it may be professedly a temporary arrange- 

 ment ; it may be under a process of improvement ; its dis- 

 advantages may be neutralised by the persons by whom 

 or the provisions under which it is administered." 



But we live In a time when we are forced as never 

 before to consider our ways, to look beneath the sur- 

 face of things, and to take thought for the future. It 

 is a time when we must go back to principles and 

 consider what, In Newman's words that I have just 

 quoted, is "abstractedly best," a time when we mav 

 be excused for aggressiveness In asserting the funda- 

 mental principles of our faith. 



Speaking in terms of our subject to-day, we may say 

 that we find ourselves a people far spent by the cost 

 of victory over a nation of technologists, a nation 

 which had carried to the highest point the training of 

 its people In applying exact knowledge to the 

 mechanical arts of both peace and war, the knowledge 

 that enabled it under stress to make gun-cotton from 

 wood and air, to conserve Its fats for food by making 

 glycerine from starch, to fire a shell seventy-five miles, 

 and to do a great many other marvellous things in the 

 mastery of matter. I have not heard of any direction 

 In which our late enemies could be charged with faults 

 attributable to a neglect of technology. On the other 

 hand, there Is abounding evidence that without it thev 

 would have been defeated in a year. The tale of the 

 forced march of our own technology in this war of 

 chemists and engineers has not yet been fully told, 

 and perhaps its triumphs are only dimly understood. 



In the face of all this it would be excusable perhaps 

 to make this the occasion to preach the urgency of 

 technology. But that is not my intention ; I am far 

 more anxious to raise my voice against Its unbridled 

 pursuit, to direct attention to the restraints under 

 which It should be fostered, and to plead for what 

 seems indispensable to its worth. 



Whatever may have been the ultimate source of 

 German decadence, it has proceeded step by step with 

 changes of outlook, of aim, and of organisation in 

 education that were of melancholy significance to 

 those who had any knowledge of the Germany of old. 

 The reproach was not In their becoming a race of 

 technologists, but In their education from beginning 

 to end yielding to the domination of a spirit which set 

 above all else the worship of power and material 

 efficiency. Surely the supreme educational lesson of 

 the war is that we teachers should stand shoulder to 

 shoulder against all the forces that tend to the vitia- 

 tion of the atmosphere of education and to the 

 desecration of our temples of learning. 



