August 4, 1887 



NATURE 



Z2>Z 



it can present to the public in the way of supplying the require- 

 ments of a great teaching institution of university rank. 



This College, in the first place, has complete Faculties of 

 Arts, Laws, Science, and Medicine, and a School of Fine Arts, 

 as \^■ell as a Boys' School. This College has fifty-eight profes- 

 sorial chairs in operation. In addition to the fifty-eight pro- 

 fessors, there is a large teaching staft' both on the general and on 

 the medical side, — teachers, lecturers, demonstrators, and so on, 

 — bringing up the whole members of the teaching staff to some- 

 thing like one hundred. Last session this College had between 

 nineteen hundred and two thousand students. There were five 

 hundred and fifty boys in the school. The buildings of this 

 College, containing, as I have said, museums, libraries, 

 lecture-halls, laboratories, and all the appliances of a univer- 

 sity, are spread over seven acres. They cost ;,^300,ooo in con- 

 struction. This College holds on trust no less a sum than 

 _^ 200, 000, chiefly devoted to prizes, scholarships, and other 

 objects of that kind ; and it holds, besides, in trust a sum of 

 ;i^i35,ooo for hospital purposes. Its income is between ;^33,ooo 

 and ;^34,cxx) a year. Taking, therefore, this College alone, so 

 far as its buildings, the contents of its buildings, and its pecu- 

 niary resources are concerned, it stands on an equal footing with 

 several of the universities in Great Britain ; and, taken in con- 

 junction with King's College, it stands undoubtedly superior to 

 some. 



To this College, therefore, in combination with King's Col- 

 lege, we may fairly look to the attainment of our object of 

 establishing a Teaching University in London which will bring 

 the higher education of London to the doors and within the 

 pecuniary resources of the less wealthy classes of the metropolis, 

 so that the disgrace that has hitherto attached to the metropolis 

 of not affording a higher education, and the discredit that 

 university education in England is to a very great extent a 

 privilege of the wealthier and of the well-to do classes, may 

 be wiped away. It should be within the reach of all, even of 

 the student of the most humble means ; and it would be well if 

 this country were to take the example of Scotland in that respect, 

 and to follow it. . . . 



In this new Teaching University there are two requirements 

 that we insist upon. One is that the candidates for its degrees 

 should have spent a certain specified time in attendance on 

 lectures and instruction within its walls ; and the other is that 

 the examinations should be superintended and conducted by the 

 teaching body of the University. 



With regard to the first of these two points I wish to say a few 

 words. . . There is something more than mere knowledge that 

 is acquired in academic instruction. There is a culture of mind 

 and a development of the moral and social nature that cannot 

 be acquired by solitary study ; and it is for these reasons 

 amongst others that those who are in favour of this movement 

 are desirous that the candidates for the degrees of the new Uni- 

 versity should prosecute a portion, at all events, of their studies 

 within the walls of the institution, so that they may imbibe 

 something of the spirit, and that they may be in some way, too, 

 impregnated by the genius loci. This has been stigmatized as 

 retrograde ; but surely there can be nothing retrograde in that 

 which has been found by universal experience to be the better 

 system of education, and which is adopted in every teaching 

 university in the country. 



There is another point, and that is in regard to examinations, 

 and it is a very essential point. We feel, and we feel very 

 strongly indeed, that the examinations should not be directed 

 by an outside body on which there are perhaps no examiners 

 and no teachers, but that the examinations should be conducted 

 by the teachers themselves in the institution in which the candi- 

 date learns. I do not say by the individual teacher of each 

 class, but by the general body of the teachers, and that is a very 

 different thing. And, as there would be more Colleges than 

 one in the new Teaching University, a candidate need not in any 

 way be examined by his own teacher, although he would be 

 examined under the direction, superintendence, and control of 

 the general body of the teachers. In every university now, I 

 believe, throughout the Kingdom the teachers are assisted in 

 their examination by assessors or by extra-professorial aid, when- 

 ever it is needed, and such, of course, would be the case in the 

 new University. We feel that examinations ought not to lead 

 teaching, and that if examinations are allowed to lead teaching, 

 the teaching is fettered by the examination, and you get to a 

 system of " cram " ; the higher education and the higher teach- 

 ing are apt to be neglected. I recollect many years ago a cir- 



cumstance illustrating this, occurring in this College in con- 

 nexion with Prof. Sharpey, one of the mcst distinguished men ever 

 connected with this College, the first Professor of Physiology 

 here and, indeed, in London. There was no course, properly 

 speaking, of Physiology given in London until Prof. Sharpey 

 began his lectures here in the year 1836-37. Prof. Sharpey 

 gave an elaborate course of Physiology. From the commence- 

 ment he attracted crowds of students. At that time there was 

 connected with this College a most estimable and most amiable 

 and most excellent old surgeon, who had grown grey within the 

 walls, as it were, of the unreformed College of Surgeons, Mr. 

 Samuel Cooper. He was an examiner of the College of 

 Surgeons, and I speak of him with the greatest respect ; but he 

 was never able to raise his mind beyond the requirements of the 

 examinations of that institution. When he heard of what Prof. 

 Sharpey was doing, he said, " What is the good of Sharpey 

 teaching them all this kind of stuff? We do not want it at the 

 College of Surgeons. We have never asked for it at the 

 College of Surgeons. Why should he teach it to them ?" He 

 had no conception beyond that, and that is the frame of mind 

 that affects every mere examiner. He has a tendency to fetter 

 and tie down the teaching to the level of his own examinations, 

 and it is impossible to bring him or an examining institution 

 above that level. We therefore wish that the instruction should 

 lead the examination, and that the examination should follow in^ 

 the wake of the teaching, and not the teaching in the wake of 

 the examination. 



SCIENCE AND REVELATION> 

 /'^N the present anniversary, which is the conclusion of my 

 ^-^ first year of office as President of this Institute, I propose 

 to address a few words to you bearing on the object of the Insti- 

 tute, and on the spirit in which, as I conceive, that object is best 

 carried out. 



The highest aim of physical science is, as far as may be pos- 

 sible, to refer observed phenomena to their proximate causes. I 

 by no means say that this is the immediate, or even necessarily 

 the ultimate object of every physical investigation. Sometimes 

 our object is to investigate facts, or to co-ordinate known facts, 

 and endeavour to discover empirical laws. These are useful 

 as far as they go, and 7nay ultimately lead to the formation of 

 theories which in the end so stand the test of what I may call 

 cross-examination by Nature, that we become impressed with the 

 conviction of their truth. Sometimes our object is the determi- 

 nation of numerical constants, with a view, it may be, to the 

 practical application of science to the wants of life. 



To illustrate what I am saying, allow me to refer to a very 

 familiar example. From the earliest ages men must have ob- 

 served the heavenly bodies. The great bulk of those brilliant 

 points with which at night the sky is spangled when clouds per- 

 mit of their being seen, retain the same relative positions night 

 after night and year after year. But a few among them are seen 

 to change their places relatively to the rest and to one another. 

 The fact of this change is embodied in the very name, planet, 

 by which these bodies are designated. I shall say nothing here 

 about the establishment of the Copernican system : I shall as- 

 sume that as known and admitted. The careful observations of 

 astronomers on the apparent places, from time to time, of these 

 wandering bodies among the fixed stars supplied us, in the first 

 instance, with a wide basis of isolated facts. After a vast 

 amount of labour, Kepler at last succeeded in discovering the 

 three famous laws which go by his name. Here, then, we have 

 the second stage ; the vast as.semblage of isolated facts are co- 

 ordinated, and embraced in a few simple laws. As yet, however, 

 we cannot say that the idea of causation has entered in. But 

 now Newton arises, and shows that the very same property of 

 matter which causes an apple to fall to the earth, which causes 

 our own bodies to press on the earth on which we stand, suffices 

 to account for those laws which Kepler discovered — nay, more, 

 those laws themselves are only very approximately true ; and, 

 when we consider the places of the planets, at times separated 

 by a considerable interval, we are obliged to suppose that the 

 elements of their orbits have slowly undergone slight changes. 

 But the simple law of universal gravitation, combined, of course, 

 with the laws of motion, not only leads to Kepler's laws as a 

 very close approximation to the actual motions, but also accounts 

 for those slight changes which have just been mentioned as 



■" Presidential Address delivered by Prof. Stok P. R.'^>.. at the annual 

 meeting of the Victoria Institute, on Tuesday, July ig. 



