I30 



NATURE 



[September 23, 1920 



hopelessly stereotyped ; the teachers have neither 

 been free to teach nor the students to learn. At no 

 time has the character of the training been under 

 discussion ; the one concern has been to maintain the 

 "standard" of the examinations^as if there could 

 be a fixed standard when examiners are always being 

 changed and knowledge grows from day to day. No 

 two individuals are mentally comparable. In the 

 degree examinations no allowance has been made for 

 the student's proclivities and choice of profession; 

 for example, whether chemist or physicist, the candi- 

 date has been forced to reach the same standard in 

 both chemistry and physics. There may have been 

 a well-meant intention to lay a broad foundation, but 

 there has been no understanding of student-nature. 



Philosophers insist that the main office of educa- 

 tion is to develop and foster the altruistic spirit— a 

 belief in truth, in goodness, in beauty, in each for 

 its own sake ; so we should believe in education 

 primarily for its own sake, as the source of our 

 happiness, not mainly because it brings pecuniary 

 , advantage or preferment. From this point of view 

 the present university examination system is one of 

 the most selfish, the most corrupting, ever created ; 

 it encourages love of show and advertisement, the 

 spirit of competition and commercialism. Unfor- 

 tunately, the vested interests which its practice has 

 created are numerous and powerful ; the underground 

 influence these will exert in deprecation of change 

 cannot fail to be great. Teachers themselves will be 

 loth to abandon it, for, being paid starvation wages, 

 the pittance they gain from examinations is of con- 

 sequence. 



The Germans alone have grasped the problem of 

 university education. At the degree examination 

 they have only required proof of competent knowledge 

 of the student's chosen subject, together with general 

 knowledge of a couple of cognate subjects which he 

 has been allowed to select from a list. Whatever 

 stones we may throw at German morals, we cannot 

 but admit that their system has given results in 

 practice, whilst ours has not. The time is coming 

 when we shall be forced to allow " self-determination " 

 in higher education as well as in the case of small 

 nations. 



Intellectuals are not only a peculiar people, but a 

 mixture of peculiar classes of definitely peculiar people. 



We have long ceased to believe in the disciplinary 

 value of this or that subject, and are gradually, but 

 all too slowly, coming to admit that allowance must 

 be made for the extraordinary variation in the abilitv 

 and intellectual proclivities of individual students. I 

 have given particulars of my own case, but I know 

 of many similar experiences among friends and 

 students whom I have had under constant observa- 

 tion. I know several men who have greatly distin- 

 guished themselves as students in subjects which they 

 have thrown entirely to the winds in later life, the 

 study of which has been without the least influence 

 on their mental development. Being acquisitive and 

 conscientious workers, they set themselves to an 

 allotted task and succeeded in it, but the time spent 

 in the study was wasted- Many able students have 

 the advocate's facultv of getting up a case for the 

 time being and as quickly forgetting it when over. 



I am satisfied, from long study of the two classes, 

 that the average engineering student and the average 

 chemical or physical student are of two quite different 

 types of mind. The engineering student shies at 

 chemistrv and physics, and rarely acquires sympathy 

 with either subject, not because he does not want to 

 learn them, but because their method makes no 

 appeal to his intelligence — the habit of mind of the 



NO. 2656, VOL. 106] 



engineer being constructive, whilst that of the chemist 

 and physicist is analytical and introspective. The 

 engineer usually does work at the request of others; 

 when he realises what is wanted, as a rule he can 

 meet requirements. He is prejjared to learn how to 

 use electrical machinery, but he does not want to 

 know much about electricity. 



Chemical engineers are being much asked for. We 

 may raise a few by striving to teach engineers to be 

 chemists; a larger proportion, perhaps, by teaching 

 chemists engineering, because many chemists are 

 constructive in their outlook as well as analytical, but 

 in neither case will the hybrid be really competent in 

 both subjects. If we are wise we shall follow the 

 German example and manacle chemist with engineer 

 and attune the two to work in sympathetic vibration. 

 The engineer has been spoilt in this country, and 

 needs to be put in his place. He has far too much 

 assurance, and is believed in just because he does 

 things which make a public show ; really, he is not 

 anything like so big as he would have us believe, 

 and is largely dependent on chemists and others who 

 da the work he but plans. All this is by way of 

 emphasising my point that special kinds of university 

 education must be provided to meet the wants of 

 specific classes — that there is no one royal road to 

 effective knowledge. The man who masters a sub- 

 ject he has feeling for does so intuitively— it is in 

 hirn to understand. When we complain,' too often 

 unjustly, of the failure of students in examinations 

 and that they have learnt little or nothing, assuming 

 that it is because they have been inattentive or not 

 applied themselves, we do not realise how difficult it 

 is for most to learn. 



To be specific, I am of the opinion that the Im- 

 perial College must be autonomous. To be eflicient 

 its courses must be most carefully adjusted to suit 

 the special peculiarities of its students, and their 

 ability must be rated by those who can follow and 

 appreciate their work. Only their teachers can do 

 this. As Sir W. H. Bragg and Prof. Starling stated 

 in their striking letter to the Times of December 22 

 last: "The whole development of university educa- 

 tion in London is impeded at every step by the sub- 

 jection of the colleges to an examining bodv which 

 is incompetent by constitution to deal with academic 

 affairs. Academic freedom is essential to progress." 

 The teachers must always be in advance of the 

 examiners, who necessarily work to a published pro- 

 gramme ; if they be made subservient, all sense of 

 initiative disappears, and their efforts to improve and 

 advance are stultified and sterilised; moreover, but 

 few students have the desire to work at subjects 

 which do not pay in the examinations, nor can thev 

 be blamed in view of the intensity of the struggle for 

 existence. True ideals are only possible under a free 

 system. 



But I would not merely free the Imperial College 

 and continue it as it is ; I would limit its functions, 

 because I am sure that it does not, and cannot in the 

 future, do all that it now attempts, and apparently 

 desires, to do. It attempts to provide both for 

 physical and biological science, but the requirements 

 of these two branches of knowledge are totally dis- 

 tinct, to be met only by distinct staffs. Devotion to 

 physical science involves and requires a mathematical 

 habit of mind ; biological science is definitely non- 

 mathematical in its tendencies; the two habits are 

 very rarely conjoined. Past discussions on heredity 

 afford a striking illustration of this duality. Though 

 a_ chemist, I happen always to have had marked 

 biological leanings. In studying my colleagues in 

 science, nothing has struck me more than the slight 



