October 20, 1898] 



NATURE 



601 



have been appointed to important educational posts at 

 home and in the Colonies ; others have gone to direct 

 scientific industries and engineering achievements. In 

 spite of the vaticinations of the doubters, the scheme of 

 the Commissioners has succeeded fa.r beyond the expect- 

 ation of even those who most beheved in it, and its 

 remarkable record ought to be widely studied by all 

 interested in the higher education of the country, and 

 especially by those who have the privilege of guiding the 

 policy of our universities. 



A similar movement has been started by the youngest 

 of our universities. The University of Wales has now got 

 its curricula into full swing, and has already begun to 

 form its roll of graduates. The question of post-graduate 

 work, and especially of Fellowships for literary and 

 scientific research, was raised at an early period in the 

 discussion of regulations for degrees. There has been 

 no matter before the senate or the court of greater or 

 even approximately equal importance. For upon the 

 decision of the authorities as to whether promising 

 students should after taking their degrees go on to real 

 post-graduate work, or, as is the case at too many places, 

 be encouraged to enter again as undergraduates at some 

 other university, generally either Oxford or Cambridge, 

 rests the whole future of the newer universities as 

 regards the higher learning. If it is regarded as the 

 natural course for a graduate to enter again as a fresh- 

 man at another university, an important stimulus towards 

 providing the necessary staflf and machinery for impart- 

 ing the best and completest teaching in all subjects will 

 be withdrawn from the colleges. The new universities 

 may do some good to their localities by giving the 

 ordinary education of a professional man, but, under such 

 a policy, they will never become homes of learning and 

 research. In fact these colleges, however well manned, 

 will, as regards the higher work only, take the place of 

 feeding schools for the old universities, and the time and 

 energies of their professors will be occupied with the 

 ignolale task, which might surely be left to the schools 

 and the cramming shops, of striving for the credit of 

 their colleges in the race for a good place in the record 

 of scholarships won or in the list of examinational suc- 

 cesses. Already one Oxford college has proposed to 

 give scholarships to be confined to the best Welsh 

 graduates, a plan well calculated to increase the number 

 of First Classes in the schools obtained by that college, 

 but certain, so far as it operates in this direction, to 

 degrade the University of Wales. It is to be hoped that 

 this proposal will receive no official countenance from 

 the University itself. 



It will be said that the degrees of the University of 

 Wales have as yet little or no market value, and that the 

 best students must go elsewhere to obtain degrees which 

 have. This may be true ; a university, like everything 

 else, must begin ; but the question arises, how is the 

 university to form its reputation, and to confer a value on 

 its degrees ? Surely not by itself sending its best men to 

 colleges on which their home academic training will only 

 help to shed lustre, and to which not only their academic 

 success, but all the credit of their afterlife will be attributed. 

 The duty of the university is to itself, and relates not 

 to the present merely, but also to the future. It has no 

 right to imperil or delay any credit or renown there may 

 be a possibility of its attaining ; and if there is any 

 lesson to be learned from the history of universities, it is 

 that learning will refuse to grow within academic walls 

 if aims are not high, and if teachers are content to see 

 others doing their highest work. 



Also, a new university should pursue this policy of 

 high aims and resolute determination to do all that a 

 university can do for learning and science, from the very 

 beginning. It has a unique opportunity. It is free from 

 the trammels of custom and prejudice, and the claims of 

 vested interests. It can be guided by older institutions, 



NO. 15 I 2, VOL. 58] 



but the guidance to be obtained from these is almost 

 more often of the nature of warning than of example. 



The contention that has been put forward, that this 

 kind of migration to undergraduate work in honours 

 schools elsewhere should be encouraged by the newer, 

 and even some of the older universities of the country, 

 and that they should aid it by the foundation of scholar- 

 ships and prizes, rests on a confusion of ideas. It may 

 sometimes be a good thing for students who are already 

 graduates to go to Oxford or Cambridge, but the interests 

 served are not those of the parent university, and it is 

 not a thing for the university as such to assist. Funds 

 for such a purpose should be provided by persons inter- 

 ested in the older universities, or in the students to be 

 sent there. 



The foundation of Research Fellowships has been 

 undertaken by universities in America with great success. 

 Witness the youthful vigour of Johns Hopkins, and the 

 great and growing vigour of Harvard and Yale, and 

 others in the United States. The plan has been several 

 times proposed in this country, but never until in the 

 scheme of the Commissioners for the Exhibition of 185 1 

 has it had a practical trial. An important pronounce- 

 ment in its favour was given a few days ago by Mr. 

 Simon at Manchester, and there is reason to hope that 

 it may be followed by some practical action at Owens 

 College or in the Victoria University. A fund for five 

 years has been subscribed chiefly in the court of the 

 University of Wales, and at a forthcoming meeting an 

 election of a Fellow will probably be made, and we trust 

 that he will prove the first of a long succession of literary 

 and scientific scholars of native growth. In spite of the 

 proverb, there is much in a name, and it seems to us that 

 no better name than Fellow could have been devised. 

 By rigidly refusing to allow undergraduate work to be 

 undertaken, and giving the style of a Research Fellow to 

 the graduate appointed, the university assures three things : 

 that he shall throughout his tenure of the Fellowship 

 at home or abroad be identified with the parent uni- 

 versity, that his status shall be clear, and that no 

 one shall be appointed whose merit is not clear and 

 unmistakable. The advantage to the colleges of having 

 a number of young men aspiring to obtain these Fellow- 

 ships will be immense, especially if, like the Ex- 

 hibition of 185 1 Commissioners, the authorities, where 

 possible, take the successful prosecution of a research as 

 the best evidence of his fitness to hold a Fellowship. 

 Nothing encourages higher work or stimulates a teacher 

 like the presence of young men looking eagerly forwaro 

 to doing something for the advancement of knowledge. 

 Nothing kills research among teachers like confinement 

 to mere preparation for examinational tests, or is more 

 soul destroying for both teacher and taught than the 

 competition which goes on for the longest list of 

 examination successes. 



It has been said that men would be encouraged to 

 begin too soon to do original work. This is surely a 

 strange thing to say in the face of the history of learning 

 and science. Some of the greatest discoverers have had 

 little or no training of the ordinary scholastic kind, and 

 it is doubtful if they would have been so successful if they 

 had spent years in grinding for successive examin- 

 ations. Surely, when a man has taken his B.A. or 

 B.Sc. degree with, say, first class honours in the 

 subject or subjects he has chosen to specialise in, he 

 ought to be ready to make a beginning of research. 

 It does not follow that his work will be unfruitful because 

 his experience has been brief, or his knowledge lacks the 

 width and depth it will subsequently acquire, and acquire 

 all the more surely and truly, if his mind is fixed on dis- 

 covery or the advancement of learning instead of on the 

 attainment of merely another first class. Training long 

 continued for e.xaminations has killed much intellect ; 

 it has created none. Yet, like many another fetish, the 



