404 



NATUKL 



[December i8, 1919 



Number of college lecturers assigned for a subject 



33 30 23 18 17 10 S 3 2 I ? 

 Number of subjects that have the number of 

 teachers specified in the upper line 



11111131396 

 Here we see at once a great difference between the 

 educational systems. The university is obviously 

 striving to meet so far as possible its higher educa- 

 tional responsibilities. There is great differentiation 

 of duty; 42 teachers are responsible each for a single 

 subject ; there are only two cases in which a subject 

 has so manv as nine teachers, whereas in the col- 

 leges the tendency is for the same subject to have a 

 great number of exponents. The favoured subjects 

 are : — Classics 33, mathematics and natural philo- 

 sophy 30, historv and economics 23, natural sciences 18, 

 arid divinitv 17. All those subjects rire also provided 

 for, to some extent at least, in the programme of 

 the universitv. There mav be, and indeed must be, 

 some differentiation within these totals, but it is a 

 differentiation which the college authorities do not 

 think it necessary to disclose. Whatever allowance 

 may be made for that, I think it is obvious that the 

 colleges tend to repeat many times over a stereotyped 

 form,- and not to distribute their energies over sub- 

 jects which, for lack of funds or some other reason, 

 arc not represented in the universitv list. Three sub- 

 jects appear in the college list and not in the univer- 

 sity list, namely, modern Greek, Celtic, and military 

 historv. We may be sure that the 176 college lec- 

 turers are in themselves fully competent to represent 

 subjects of profound hurnan interest which the uni- 

 versity disregards for want of means. That it is the 

 system and not the lecturers that account for this 

 convergence upon a few subjects was evident enough 

 during the war, when Cambridge lecturers were to be 

 found among the most proficient and successful 

 workers with their brains in manv departments of 

 activity. The needs of peace are not less urgent than 

 the needs of war. 



No one can think that the distribution of teachers 

 and subjects would be what it is if the educational 

 svstem of the university and the colleges were under 

 the control of a single competent body bent upon mani- 

 festing a true ideal of the use of educational endow- 

 ments, whether in monev or men. 



Suppose, for example, that the council of the Senat'.> 

 were recognised as responsible to the countr\' for the 

 educational system of the university .and the colleges 

 jointlv ; that, once appointed, they were freed from 

 the referendum of every item of their procedure to the 

 lottery of a vote in the Senate. Imagine what would 

 happen if the university really had an entrance 

 examination and the colleges had to select their 

 members from among the successful candidates. One 

 may speculate upon what such a body would oroduce, 

 but it is scarcely imaginable that they would plump 

 for concentrating so much of the college teaching in 

 general terms upon classics, mathematics, historv, 

 and divinity. 



.And, in support of the contention that diversity of 

 intellectual effort is a pertinent consideration, T would 

 point out that if recondite subjects are to be studied 

 at all it must be at our own great centres of learning. 

 If there is any part of the world where old customs 

 are dying out. or interesting species becoming rare 

 or extinct, it is for highlv centralised countries like 

 ours, at a distance from the scene of action, to take 

 care that the subject is studied while there is yet time. 

 On the spot, where no doubt the material is more 

 readilv available, people are too much preoccupied to 

 notice the ultimate effect of their own personal 

 activity. If we should, for example, set about exter- 

 minating the vermin of London houses (which, bv the 

 NO. 2616. VOL. 104] 



way, is above all things a most urgent question of re- 

 housing), it is not from any Londoner, or even from 

 our near neighbours in Cambridge, however interest- 

 ing the minor horrors of war may be to their bio- 

 logists, that any protest will be raised about the out- 

 rage which the extermination would entail upon the 

 province of natural history. 



I have looked through that interesting volume "The 

 Yearbook of the L'niversities of the Empire, 1914," 

 to see whether the older universities of this country 

 and the Empire had a notably extended or different 

 range of subjects. The differences are mostly in name 

 or in the differentiation of medical and theological 

 subjects. It is interesting to note the gradual forma- 

 tion of university teaching in new lands. It seems 

 to begin with medicine and theology, law, engineer- 

 ing, architecture, commerce, and banking; and next 

 to take in our old college friends mathematics, classics, 

 and natural sciences, but it seldom shows any par- 

 ticular characteristics of local scholarship or specialised 

 learning; in the older institutions there are some 

 suggestive subjects, as .'Assyrian and Babylonian 

 archasology, classical archaeology, African languages 

 (Swahili and Bantu), Irish language and literature, 

 Dutch language and literature, Japanese, Portuguese, 

 Scandinavian languages and Thibetan, phonetics, 

 library science, ancient Indian history and culture, 

 Colonial history, Irish historv, Scots history, civic 

 design and civic law, scholastic philosophy, Zend 

 philosophy, rhetoric and oratory, geodesies, acoustics, 

 meteorology, and epidemiology in various forms. 



.Among the subjects which I have noticed in other 

 connections as not represented by name in any of the 

 universities of the Empire, but still claiming attention 

 from those who would help to make the facilities for 

 education complete, there are, in the first place, ihe his. 

 torv of the various arts and sciences and of medicine, 

 for which some provision has recentlv been made at 

 Oxford under Dr. Singer; oceanography, which, 

 through the generosity of Prof. Herdman, has now 

 obtained a footing in Liverpool ; goodynamics, for 

 which Cambridge wishes to make orovision. historical 

 geography and exploration ; Malay and Polynesian 

 languages and antiquities, aerodynamics, meteoro- 

 logical optics, now neglected in this country ; terres- 

 trial magnetism, seismologv, climatology (past and 

 present), particularlv of the Empire; illumination and 

 photographv, metrology, the science of precision, 

 British archaeologv and dialects ; and perhaps the 

 technical subiects of radio-telegraphv, ballistics, and 

 ventilation. These are subjects with which alone a 

 fullv equipped university is competent .adequatelv to 

 deal, and the countrv is ill-provided until the educa- 

 tional authorities co-operate to supplv between them 

 what is needed. To secure this object I nm not at all 

 convinced that State aid is the only possibility. The 

 pious benefactor is no more extinct than he was in 

 the days of Henrv VITI. and Queen Elizabeth, but 

 while the universities and their colleges speak with 

 two voices and leave us uncertain as to their ideals, 

 it is impossible that he should not be discour.Tged. 



.As one passes in review our own educational 

 institutions, one mav iudge of their ideals by their 

 results. Judging in that wav, and looking^ at the 

 education of our public schools, we may fairly say 

 that the social or ethical ideal is splendid. It ex- 

 presses the principle of excellence which I take to 

 mean success in fair competition. It is no doubt Hel- 

 lenic rather than Christian ; it is based upon the 

 literature of the ancient Greeks, and has still strength 

 enough to call forth the most devoted self-sacrifice. 

 In the universities also the same ideal is quite easily 

 recognised. There, if anvwhere, vou can see the wor- 

 ship of succe.ss in fair competition developed into fl 



