1 84 



NATURE 



[June 21, 1900 



ation of plates taken by M. Blajko. The star is not in the 

 D.M., and has the following position : — 

 R.A. oh. 28m.\,o„ 

 Decl. +79° 33' / "' 

 The brightness varies from between 8-9 to about 1 2 magnitude. 

 It was increasing in October 1896, and decreasing in October 

 1897 ; it was almost at minimum during May 1898, April 1899, 

 and at commencement of May 1900. 



Ei'HEMERis OF Eros. — Herr F. Ristenpart communicates a 

 revised ephemeris of this planet to the Astronoinische Nachrich- 

 ten (Bd. 152, No. 3643), as follows : — 



Ephemeris for 1 2h. Berlin Mean Titne. 

 1900. R.A. Decl. 



h. m. s. o I II ' 



June 21 ... o 30 15-44 ... + 9 57 27-1 

 23 ••• 33 42-19 ••■ 10 33 336 

 25 ... 37 8-20 ... II 9 490 

 27 ••■ 40 33*44 ••• II 46 I3'3 

 29 ... 43 57-91 ... 12 22 466 

 July I ... 47 21-57 ... 12 59 29-0 

 3 •• 50 44 '44 ••• 13 36 21-0 

 5 ... o 54 6-51 ... +14 13 22-3 

 Howe's Photographic Observation of Eros. — Mr. 

 A. C. D. Crommelin writes to point out an error in our 

 note on the above, in which it was incorrectly stated that 

 Prof. Howe's photographic observation of Eros was obtained 

 during the solar eclipse of May 28. The photograph was 

 taken before sunrise on the morning of the eclipse, some 

 hours before totality. The error was introduced by the report 

 of the observation being included in reports of the eclipse, 

 and if uncorrected might lead to wrong estimates of the com- 

 parative brightness of the planet and of the darkness of the 

 sky during totality. 



A MODERN UNIVERSITY. 

 I. 

 'T'HE granting of a Charter to the University of Birmingham, 

 which has just become an accomplished fact, forms a 

 fitting climax to an educational movement which may turn out 

 to be one of the most momentous of the century. We have seen 

 University Colleges called into existence in the great cities of 

 the land by the perception of leading citizens that culture and 

 scientific education of a high type must be brought to their doors 

 and made accessible to all ; and we have seen the chairs of those 

 colleges occupied by men who have devoted their spare time to 

 the advancement of learning in various ways. All this has been 

 of the greatest interest in the past and is full of hope for the 

 future. 



Side by side with these colleges there is now growing up in many 

 cities a Technical School generally under ISIunicipal Govern- 

 ment, wherein artisans and hand workers generally may be 

 trained in their craft, and in the main principles underlying it, 

 in a more direct and satisfactory manner than by the old system 

 of apprenticeship. 



Such schools can no more turn out a finished artisan than the 

 colleges can turn out a finished scholar. Much remains to be 

 learned in later life and in the actual pursuit of trade or profession, 

 but the early stages are overcome not only more rapidly, but far 

 more thoroughly, by aid of direct instruction ; and in the more 

 favourable cases a substratum of scientific knowledge is laid, and 

 a grasp of principle attained, which must be of the utmost benefit 

 hereafter, and could never have been obtained on the old plan. 

 It is this scientific training in principles which is the really 

 needful thing, when the public is educated enough to perceive 

 it ; it is this which is of interest to the educationist, and not a 

 mere instruction in handicraft : it is the making of men, and not 

 the making of machines, which is of vital importance to the 

 future of a country. 



Without a training in principles a man remains ignorant and 

 narrow, limited to the performance of the one thing which he 

 has been trained to do, and incapable of turning his attention 

 profitably to anything else ; inelastic and incapable of devising 

 or of assimilating modifications and developments, which, as they 

 come in, tend to leave him stranded and belated, waiting only 

 for a period of slacker demand to throw him out of employment. 

 And even if the artisan and the foreman are well educated, there 

 remains his employer to be considered. If he is ignorant — too 

 ignorant to turn his enterprise in the right direction when oppor- 



NO. 1599, VOL. 62] 



tunity offers — his workers must suffer, and the whole nation 

 suffers with them. But though Colleges and Technical Schools 

 impart education on the one hand and instruction on the other ; 

 though they enlarge and make more real the education avail- 

 able to the average citizen, they do not control and modify the 

 educational ideal of the country. That ideal remains in many 

 respects still essentially the same as it was at the beginning of 

 the present century, before all this amazing inrush of new know- 

 ledge. The new knowledge has not yet been incorporated into 

 education. The half-hearted effort made by schools to introduce 

 what they term a " modern, side " only serves to emphasise the 

 blankness of the prospect. They say, and say truly, no doubt, 

 that the new studies do not answer. They do not pay either for 

 Government appointments or for the university. But a new 

 university, able to set its own standards, select its own faculties^ 

 and set its seal on students of its own subjects, has far larger 

 possibilities before it. It can control, and not only impart, edu- 

 tion. It may need an effort to rise to its privileges. The easiest 

 plan is to follow the lead of others and establish degrees on the 

 worn old lines, but that is not what we expect and hope from 

 the new university of the Midlands. We hope to see it break 

 away from mediieval traditions and realise the need there is for 

 a new educational ideal. 



The aim we have before us is an aim at actualities rather thark 

 at artificialities ; at real things rather than at conventions. 



There is a stage of thoroughness at which a study of the 

 conventionalities of grammar and orthography is able to convey 

 real information about men and things — the advanced stage 

 when it becomes the science of philology — but as usually learnt 

 by ordinary persons it is little better than a conventional code 

 and set of rules. If there was little in the world to learn about — 

 as in the middle ages there was but little — it might be well to 

 spend much time in acquiring precisely the gender of nouns and 

 the terminations of irregular verbs in different foreign tongues ; 

 not only for practical purposes but for mental training ; but amid 

 the superfluity of real subjects of the present day, of all of which 

 the ordinary person is densely ignorant, to immerse him for a 

 long period in these barren studies is wasteful of his youth. 



On the other hand, History is reality ; and some knowledge 

 of history is necessary for every one. Art, again, and Literature 

 and Music are, or may be, realities ; and the vast majority who 

 have no power of creation should at least learn reverently ta 

 appreciate the great work of the greatest masters in all subjects, 

 unless they are deaf and dumb and blind. The things really 

 valuable to the human race should be made in some degree 

 accessible to all, and this part of the work of education the 

 Press and the Stage indirectly in some degree accomplish ; 

 imperfectly, no doubt, but often more really than do the bodies 

 which make the attempt in a more academic way. 



Thus we would discriminate between the conventionalities of 

 language and the realities of literature, just as we discriminate 

 between the laws of colour and perspective, the technique of the 

 painter on the one hand— and the great work of art itself, the 

 expression of a thought or of an emotion, or of a beauty or of a 

 fact. To the scholar, as to the painter, the two are inextricably- 

 interwoven ; technique is the material in which he works ; but 

 the general human race, who have to do the work of the world, 

 and who constitute the bulk of the nation, are neither scholarly 

 nor artistic, and it is both wasteful and cruel to plunge them 

 into technique, and disgust them with the — to them — dull and 

 meaningless details, instead of educating them in the finished 

 work possible only to masters of the craft. 



The same sort of things do we say of science and of mathe- 

 matics. Here, again, there is too great a tendency to educate 

 youths in subtleties and artifices and minutise, as if they were 

 going all to be accomplished mathematicians or men of science. 

 The teacher is himself, perhaps, a mathematician, and so thinks 

 that what was necessary for him is suitable for everybody. 

 More usually, of course, the teacher knows very little about it, 

 and feels only that he was himself taught that way, and that he 

 must pass it on. Only a few stop to think what they are doing, 

 and these are the educationists ; what they have to say is 

 written at large, and there is no need to repeat it. Some of them 

 are faddists, doubtless ; not all are wise ; but it is well at any 

 rate to try and think a matter out ; and the speculative teach- 

 ing even of a faddist is likely to be more stimulating than the 

 tenth-hand droning of a conventional pedagogue. To indicate 

 our meaning in terms of mathematics and science, as we have 

 tried briefly to indicate it in the domain of more humanistic 

 studies, we would say that a good deal of the teaching of Euclid 



