696 



NATURE 



TULY 28, I92I 



Unaltered as is my eagerness for the promotion of 

 technological studies and undiminished my belief in 

 their university rights, I can therefore, and do at the 

 present time, listen at least with patience to alarmist 

 voices more than hinting at the elimination of techno- 

 logies from our universities. It is more grateful to 

 the ears than some other prescriptions coming from 

 advisers who would act on the precept that it is law- 

 ful to learn from the enemy, but would, it seems, 

 have us learn just the wrong thing. 



But we must be careful not to be thrown off our 

 balance by a laudable emotion. It is perfectly certain 

 that our national circumstances require, and will 

 require in an increasing degree, the application of the 

 highest knowledge to the industrial arts. An increas- 

 ing proportion of those endowed by Nature with the 

 best brains and the strongest elements of character 

 will be absorbed by industry, simply because the main- 

 tenance of industry is a condition of existence, and its 

 maintenance becomes more and more exacting of both 

 mind and character. 



The tendency of those who are so susceptible to 

 anything that seems to threaten a depreciation of 

 university life to say, " Let industry have the brains it 

 wants, get them trained how it wants, and where it 

 chooses— anywhere hut /lere," seems to me a fatal 

 closing of the eyes to what is written in blood on the 

 pages of recent history. 



Not less wrong, in my opinion, are those who still 

 maintain that the universities have done their whole 

 duty when they have provided the unspecialised studies 

 that are fundamental to industrial science. We know, 

 indeed, that these are all-important, and that men 

 well trained in them, if properly used, will learn else- 

 where in the end effectively to apply them. But that 

 there exist ranges of special knowledge, essentially 

 high science, lying between the abstract scieaces and 

 the mechanical arts, and that a training in this know- 

 ledge may be organised to great advantage in teaching 

 institutions, will not be disputed by anyone who has 

 regarded the evidence at hand. Certain it is that 

 these so-called technologies will be taught somewhere, 

 just as the specialised high studies of theology, law, 

 and medicine are taught, and where they are taught 

 well, there will they be sought. They will be sought 

 now as never before, and what appears to be the 

 matter most needing consideration in our discussion 

 to-day, the point on which I wish to focus attention, is 

 this : that unless the universities collectively embody 

 enough high technology to meet adequately the pro- 

 spective demand, we shall inevitably cast a large 

 section of our best industrial manhood into institutions 

 wholly devoted to one type of studies and dominated 

 by aims which, however worthy, are directed to the 

 object of immediate material utility. 



1 cannot believe that any thoughtful Englishman 

 can now regard such a prospect with equanimity. He 

 has surely realised too well the functions of a true 

 university, and what we must exact from it for the 

 education of our race : that it must be, above all, a 

 centre of life in which we secure the influences that 

 will regard and tend the idealism of youth, that will 

 bring into good fellowship and sympathy young men 

 coming from all quarters, cherishing every kind of 

 healthy interest and going out into the world to every 

 kind of legitimate pursuit. It must be a community 

 where traditions of honour and high aims are created 

 and impressed, and where no study is at home that 

 is not fraught with a continually disinterested exercise 

 of the mind. 



"It is pledged to admit," says Newman, "without 

 fear, without prejudice, without compromise, all 

 comers, if they come in the name of Truth ; to adjust 

 views, and experiences, and habits of mind the most 

 independent and dissimilar ; and to give full play to 



NO. 2700, VOL. 107] 



thought and erudition in their most original forms^ 

 in their most intense expressions, and in their most 

 ample circuit. Thus to draw many things into one- 

 is its special function." 



It rnust be, in short, the place that Milton conceived 

 as giving the "compleat and generous education that 

 fits a man to perform justly, skilfully, and magnani- 

 mously all the offices both private and publick of Peace 

 and War." 



It is in such an environment surely that we must 

 educate as many as we can of those who are to be the, 

 guiding spirits of the working world. 



It has, I believe, seemed to many of us here, and 

 certainly to some in the country itself, that the techno-' 

 logical universities of Germany, the much-vaunted 

 " Technische Hochschulen,^' have, in the field of educa- 

 tion, been strikingly symbolic of a change of spirit in 

 that nation. True it is that they have not usurped 

 the very name of "university," but they made pre- 

 tensions and acquired prestige and powers that in 

 effect gave them an equal place, or even a prior one, 

 in the esteem of their country. The German, it is 

 true, has never abandoned his formal homage to the 

 older university ideal, just as he has maintained in 

 external form, over much of his educational system, 

 the discipline of what are called "humanities." We 

 have found the modern German still in a way in- 

 formed in things intellectual, moral, and aesthetic, 

 but we have felt that this equipment was becoming 

 more and more a conventional outer- garment, accord- 

 ing less and less with the spirit it enveloped. 



Nothing has happened that can rightly lead the 

 Germans to relax their cultivation of technology, but 

 among the signs of their regeneration we shall surely 

 look for the return of a true al'egiance to their older 

 ideals of universities and all they must stand for in 

 the scheme of a truer civilisation. They must ' 

 acknowledge that there is something in university 

 life transcending in importance the achievement of 

 efficiency, and that the first care of the nation should 

 be to see that its education proceeds where influences 

 prevail that will touch the spirit of youth to right 

 ambitions and ideals of life. Among the excesses of 

 regimentation the Germans have, I think, good cause 

 to reconsider their educational plan of isolating 

 seminaries of technology. 



If thus, in the light of recent history, I am brought 

 to plead more earnestly than ever for the ranging of 

 this set of studies for their own sake within the uni- 

 versity, it is in no spirit of condescension or without 

 a strong conviction that they have much to give as 

 well as to gain. It has been my own fortune to live 

 in a university which, perhaps more than any other, 

 has made ventures in the domain of technology and 

 has sought to bring into an articulated and har- 

 monious whole, without preference or priority, with- 

 out caste social or intellectual, on equal terms and 

 with equal rights, the studies, teachers, and students 

 concerned with bpth professional and industrial occu- 

 pations. I do not know that there is one among our 

 teachers who would not acknowledge advantage from 

 this association and bespeak from it, when rightly 

 achieved, a broadening rather than a narrowing in- 

 fluence on the best elements of university life. 



I hope I am not insensible to the safeguards that 

 must be observed. A tendency to extravagance lies 

 in every new movement, and in relation to technology 

 it is most important that there should be restraint 

 of ill-considered plans. These safeguards I en- 

 deavoured to outline when speaking on- this theme 

 at the congress nine years ago. It is perhaps per- 

 missible again to urge that the universities should 

 observe a due proportion and economy by differentia- 

 tion in their technologies according to the natural 

 homes of these, that they should study co-operation 



