1892 IDEAL OF A MODERN UNIVERSITY 229 



HoDESLEA, Eastbourne, 

 April 11, 1892. 



My dear Lankester — We have been having ten days 

 of sunshine, and I have been correspondingly lazy, especi- 

 ally about letter-writing. This, however, is my notion ; 

 that unless people clearly understand that the university 

 of the future is to be a very different thing from the 

 university of the past, they had better put off meddling 

 for another generation. 



The mediaeval university looked backwards : it pro- 

 fessed to be a storehouse of old knowledge, and except in 

 the way of dialectic cobweb-spinning, its professors had 

 nothing to do with novelties. Of the historical and 

 physical (natural) sciences, of criticism and laboratory 

 practice, it knew nothing. Oral teaching was of supreme 

 importance on account of the cost and rarity ot 

 manuscripts. 



The modern university looks forward, and is a factory 

 of new knowledge : its professors have to be at the top of 

 the wave of progress. Research and criticism must be 

 the breath of their nostrils ; laboratory work the main 

 business of the scientific student ; books his main helpers. 



The lecture, however, in the hands of an able man 

 will still have the utmost importance in stimulating 

 and giving facts and principles their proper relative 

 prominence. 



I think we should get pretty nearly what is wanted 

 by grafting a College de France on to the University of 

 London, subsidising University College and King's College 

 (if it will get rid of its tests, not otherwise), and setting 

 up two or three more such bodies in other parts of 

 London. (Scotland, with a smaller population than 

 London, has four complete universities !) 



I should hand over the whole business of medical 

 education and graduation to a medical universitas to be 

 constituted by the royal colleges and medical schools, 



