THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT IN ENGLAND. 



271 



37. 

 The Analy- 



influence of that review must have been very powerful 

 in rousing the older English universities out of a state 

 of stagnation, and especially in stimulating younger minds 

 in the direction of the long-delayed reform of studies. 

 An important step in this direction was taken by three 

 undergraduates of Cambridge Herschel, Babbage, and * 

 Peacock who in 1812 formed the Analytical Society, brid e - 

 with the distinct object of introducing the more modern 

 and powerful analytical methods developed mainly by 

 Euler and Lagrange, and deposited in their numerous 

 Memoirs in the publications of the foreign academies. 1 

 In harmony with them worked Whewell, Airy, and 

 Sedgwick, who did much to enlarge the programme of 

 mathematical and scientific studies, though they very 

 staunchly upheld that the real object of university 

 education could not be identified with any special 

 method or school of thought, but was expressed in 

 the specific ideal peculiar to England, that of a liberal 

 education. 2 



The universities of Scotland, unlike those of England, 

 instead of nursing an exclusive spirit, and encouraging 

 only scanty intercourse between teachers and students of 

 different centres, lived in constant exchange of professors 

 and ideas much in the same way as has always been the 

 custom on a larger scale among German and other Conti- 

 nental universities. Though this is destructive of that 

 individual character of the university or the college which 



38. 

 University 



Scotland. 



1 See note 1 to p. 233 ; also for 

 many details Rouse Ball's ' History 

 of the Study of Mathematics at 

 Cambridge,' 1889, p. 120, &c. 



2 On Whewell and his writings 

 on university education see note 



to p. 261. Sir George Biddell 

 Airy (1801-1891) published in 1826, 

 ' Mathematical Tracts ' (2d ed. , 

 1831) on the lunar and planetary 

 theories, &c. , for the use of students 

 in the university. 



