402 



NATURE 



[December i8, 1919 



address; the president himself is in many ways a 

 different person from him who undertoolt the duty of 

 addressing you two years and a half ago. 



At that time I had been a good deal moved by the 

 wearying controversy about the relative merits of 

 classics and science in education, because the physical 

 sciences as taught were such a doleful misrepresenta- 

 tion of the spirit of inquiry about the universe which 

 has moved men in all ages and is as clamant to-day 

 as ever. The mvsteries of the firmament, the mid- 

 night skv, the storm and calm, the earthquake and 

 the thunder, the sunshine, the rainbow and the halo, 

 the intolerable heat and the pitiless cold, the mariner's 

 compass, the aurora and the mirage, are stifl as 

 wonderful as ever to the wayfarer and the seafarer, 

 and even the dweller in towns wants to know more 

 about them. Yet our educational system, as 1 knew 

 it, passed all these subjects by and offered instead the 

 determination of the specific heat of copper, with 

 other things that the specific heat of copper stands 

 for. The same, I believe, is true for many of the 

 most interesting subjects of scholarship in ancient and 

 modern civilisations, learning, and languages. .\nd 

 if .m inquirer, voung or old, should asl< whether. If 

 he went there, the great universities could tell him 

 all about the things of wonder or of beauty that he is 

 conscious of, or about the reminiscences of past 

 generations that he finds around him as he travels 

 through life, he could onlv be told that in consequence 

 of the perverse malignitv of external clrcurnstances 

 they had no money to devote to his enlightenment. 

 The capacity would be there in abundance, but not the 

 means. In three years they would put him in a posi- 

 tion to pursue intelligently for himself if he pleased 

 anv of the subjects in which his interest had been 

 excited, but the facilities for education would extend 

 onlv to the point where his interest began. 



So I wrote a little pamphlet on "The I.acU of 

 Science in Education, with .Some Hints of What 

 Might Be," and when I was invited to occupy this 

 chair I thought T might be of some service to educa- 

 tion if T pressed the subject further and endeavoured 

 to show how, in spite of the good will of nearly 

 evervbodv concerned, the peculiar constitution of our 

 chief universities, w'as really standing in the wav of 

 the loftv ideal of higher education which must find 

 expression if the education which we all want is reallv 

 to rome to pass in this country. 



Circumstances have alreadv vastlv changed. Com- 

 mittees have sat upon the teaching of science and 

 the teaching of modern languages. .\ great Educa- 

 tion .-\ct has been passed, and the poverty of the 

 universities has overstepped the limits of starvation 

 and a Commission of Inquiry is promised. So we 

 are now on the high road to making presidential 

 addresses matters of quite subordinate interest. Still, 

 you may be interested to hear what I wrote two years 

 and a half ago in explanation of the peculiar difficul- 

 ties of our educational system ; so here it is. It makes 

 a good deal of play of a certain scene in " The Mer- 

 chant of Venice," which I shall beg vou to regard, 

 for a few minutes only, as a satire upon the state of 

 the universities in the spacious times of Queen Eliza- 

 beth, after a period of magnificent activit\~on the part 

 of founders and benefactors and after a succession of 

 statutes for the universities made bv successiv-' 

 monarchs for the governance of those in.stitutions, 

 which were then recognised as of the highest import- 

 ance in the State. Such a period of reconstruction 

 seems to have come again in our time, and the satire, 

 if it be one, is as true to-dav as it was three centuries 

 ago. 



I was arrested by the curious sentiment, "If to do 

 were as easy as to know what were good to do, 

 chapels had been churches and poor men's cottages 

 NO. 2616, VOL. 104] 



princes' palaces." I wondered whether Portia was 

 in fact intended to personify a liberal education. For 

 other subjects of human activity he.' statement is 

 palpably absurd. .AH the experience of the British 

 race indicates to us that the acute divisions between 

 people arise in discussions as to what were good to 

 do; the actual doing is easy if the preliminary ques- 

 tion "what were good to do" is really decided. Can 

 anyone doubt that after our experience of the war? 



But if it were education that Shakespeare was 

 thinliing about, chapels and churches, poor men's 

 cottages and princes' palaces are not inappropriate in 

 that connection ; the sentiment stimulates the imagina- 

 tion. Certainly in education to know what were good 

 to do does seem in practice to be infinitely easier than 

 to do. From time to time the newspapers are full' of 

 reports of conferences, meetings, congresses, and 

 assemblies all fully assured that they know what were 

 good to do, yet very little happens. Our scheme of 

 education is still unsatisfying. Why? 



That is the question which I propose for your con- 

 sideration. Why is it that all the pious opinions about 

 education come to nothing or to so little? 



First of all it must be noted that the resolutions 

 and proposals are not addressed to anybody in par- 

 ticular. Presumably they are intended to form public- 

 opinion, but public opinion has no authoritative voice 

 with those who are in charge of the higher educa- 

 tional institutions. The resolutions are sent out like 

 wireless signals from a ship at sea. .\ny educational 

 institution with a receiver tuned to the proper wave- 

 length can take them in, but if the receiver is not 

 tuned or the operator is inattentive, nothing happens. 

 There is no corporate responsibility for the aggregate 

 of our higher educational institutions. 



We may, I think, agree that if we wish for ideals 

 in education in this country we must find them in the 

 universities. If the universities give the encourage- 

 ment of their example and their licence to teach onl}' 

 to men and women who are really educated in the 

 best sense of the word, their influence will leaven the 

 whole of education throughout the country ; and, on 

 the contrary, if when they leave the universities the 

 men and women who have to teach, or to control 

 teachers, are themselves imperfectly educated, it is 

 hopeless to expert a \\ ill-balanced, living educational 

 system. .Among the universities, for reasons good oj- 

 ill, into which I need not enter, the older Universities 

 of Cambridge and Oxford have a preponderant 

 influence. 



.\nd, to my mind, the outstanding characteristic of 

 the organisation of the older universities is the lack 

 of any recognised door by which their corporate 

 responsibility can be reached. In each case the uni- 

 versity is it.self a corporate educational institution 

 which includes some twenty colleges, which are also 

 separate corporate educational institutions. You 

 never can tell whether the persons, with whom you 

 have business are the university or the colleges, and 

 it is quite possible that when you think to address 

 the one vou find yourself confronted with the other. 

 The universities in their corporate capacity are con- 

 strained by statutes and traditions handed down by 

 our forefathers to look on in comparative impotence 

 while their ideals are distorted or concealed by the 

 interplay of the interests of the many corporations 

 of which they are composed. The whole complex 

 scheme of management forms a sort of craft or 

 mystery which ycr\ few even of the initiated reall\ 

 comprehend. 



In January of 1917 the Headmasters' Conference 

 (which consists of men with some academic experi- 

 ence)' passed a resolution to the effect that Greek 

 should no longer be required for the entrance 

 examination of the Universities of Oxford and Cam- 



