A LIBERAL EDUCATION 51 



succeed in their noble endeavors to shape our universities 

 towards some such ideal as this, without losing what is valu- 

 able and distinctive in their social tone ! But until they have 

 succeeded a liberal education will be no more obtainable in our 

 Oxford and Cambridge Universities than in our public schools. 5 



If I am justified in my conception of the ideal of a liberal 

 education ; and if what I have said about the existing educa- 

 tional institutions of the country is also true, it is clear that 

 the two have no sort of relation to one another; that the best 

 of our schools and the most complete of our university trainings 10 

 give but a narrow, one-sided, and essentially illiberal educa- 

 tion while the worst give what is really next to no education 

 at all. The South London Working Men's College could not 

 copy any of these institutions if it would. I am bold enough 

 to express the conviction that it ought not if it could. 15 



For what is wanted is the reality and not the mere name 

 of a liberal education; and this College must steadily set 

 before itself the ambition to be able to give that education 

 sooner or later. At present we are but beginning, sharpening 

 our educational tools, as it were, and, except a modicurn of 20 

 physical science, we are not able to offer much more than is to 

 be found in an ordinary school. 



Moral and social science one of the greatest and most 

 fruitful of our future classes, I hope at present lacks only 

 one thing in our program, and that is a teacher. A con- 25 

 siderable want, no doubt ; but it must be recollected that it is 

 much better to want a teacher than to want the desire to learn. 



Further, we need what, for want of a better name, I must 

 call Physical Geography. What I mean is that which the 

 Germans call "Erdkunde." It is a description of the earth, 30 

 of its place and relation to other bodies ; of its general struc- 

 ture, and of its great features winds, tides, mountains, 

 plains ; of the chief forms of the vegetable and animal worlds, 



