June 2 i, 1900J 



NATURE 



185 



and algebra and trigoncmetry is conventional, and unsuitable 

 to the average youth. If a youth is going to be a mathematician, 

 it matters very little how he is taught these things, so long as 

 they are put in his way. He can hardly have too much of them, 

 he can look at them every way and they present no difficulty ; 

 but even the young mathematician might be saved the wearisome 

 and long continued grind through the conventional books of 

 Euclid, with the result that at the end he knows about as much 

 geometry as a month of reasonable teaching would have given 

 him. It is not mathematics at all that he is studying when he 

 is doing Euclid in the usual way, it is a piece of old world 

 literature, very admirable in its proper place, no doubt, and read 

 through at a fair pace quite interesting. It is at any rate far 

 more interesting than the military despatches with which so 

 large another portion of his time is usually, at the same time, 

 being burdened— a form of literature which is not of the 

 slightest interest, and leaves no residue of real information in his 

 mind, except that Ciaul used to be divided into three parts ; that 

 Cresar's army built an ingenious and highly technical bridge ; 

 that he had difficult times in conquering a people who are not 

 our ancestors, but who happened to occupy the same plot of 

 ground on the earth's surface as we do now. 



The conventional part of algebra we refer to may be illus- 

 trated by Ci.C. M. and other rules which in actual work are 

 never needed or employed even by mathematicians. Factors 

 and Equations and Progressions are well enough, — all those 

 parts that are really used or likely to be used hereafter, and all 

 those parts which give a firmer grasp of principles. 



Thus in arithmetic, familiarity with such a subject as scales of 

 notation — with the principles, that is, of Arabian numeration — 

 will be really educative and far more helpful than excessive 

 repetition of a rule called " practice," and much dealing with 

 commercial articles. A variety of problems from mensuration, 

 mechanics and heat might be introduced into arithmetic, and 

 the subject made more living than it is apt to be. Mensuration 

 and practical trigonometry may be made truly educative subjects, 

 and a quantity of arithmetical exercises may be founded upon 

 things actually done in the workshop, the laboratory and the 

 field, in the working out of which boys might readily be got to 

 take a real interest. 



But all these are school subjects. What have they to do 

 with a university ? They have a great deal to do with it in 

 reality, for it is one of the functions and the privileges of a 

 i university indirectly to control, or rather influence, the schools. 

 The influence is quite natural and unavoidable anyhow, but 

 on the side of exhibitions and scholarships it becomes obvious 

 and direct. 



The schools must train largely for the universities, and the 

 universities must train largely for life. 



Now it is just in this training for life that the universities 

 have proved deficient. The only life they have contemplated 

 has been that of the politician and the lawyer on the one hand, 

 and the scholar and recluse on the other. The kind of train- 

 ing needed or supposed to be needed by the past generation 

 of statesmen has been supplied — with results not wholly and 

 completely satisfactory ; the kind of training needed for the 

 highly speciali.sed scholar has likewise and will always be 

 supplied. The ancient universities are the natural homes of 

 this kind of learning, and no modern institutions can hope or 

 should attempt to compete with them. The aroma of centuries 

 is a unique growth, and should be carefully fostered and 

 reverenced by a busy and pushing generation. 



It would be a calamity if anything were done to destroy the 

 peace and old world quiet of mediceval institutions, founded 

 "n monastic traditions and full of attraction for the few who 



J called to be learned. That Oxford should specialise in 



chseology and ancient philosophy is most appropriate ; that it 

 .should regard with jealous eyes the learning of the present 

 century, and hesitate about letting its old bottles be endangered 

 by the inclusion of new wine, is natural and may be wise. 

 We would urge its custodians jealously to preserve the old 

 learning, and leave experiments in new developments to younger 

 and less fragile growths. We would treat the old universities 

 like old buildings, relics of the past, to be most carefully 

 preserved, and supplying something in the life of the nation 

 which no amount of energy or reforming spirit is competent 

 to supply. 



If this old world atmosphere disappears it is an irreparable loss. 

 Let its custodians be jealous and conservative ; if they see no 



way of engrafting the new learning on the old stock, without 

 ruining it, then it were far better that the new learning should be 

 planted in fresh soil. 



Such soil is furnished by natural circumstance at the inter- 

 section of great trade routes, at the market places of the 

 world. Here the average man is at his strongest and busiest, 

 here he is most actively in touch with life on this planet, and 

 is serving his day and generation with an energy which is 

 unmistakable. The motives, doubtless, are mixed, and the 

 results are mixed, there is little Utopian about them ; yet 

 there is real self-sacrifice for a far-off good instinctively felt. 

 Ugly surroundings are put up with, as a concomitant appar- 

 ently necessary, and as at any rate temporarily unavoidable ; 

 and life is lived hard for an end not often clearly grasped, yet 

 powerfully felt to the uttermost parts of the Empire. It is 

 on such strenuous home industry, of director, of manager, of 

 foreman, of artisan and of salesmen that our empire is estab- 

 lished ; and if there is one thing that we are more powerfully 

 realising at present than another it is that our empire must 

 be consolidated, that fresh guiding force must be available, 

 not mere energy— of that there is plenty— but more directing 

 force, more intelligent guidance, more discrimination, more 

 breadth of view — in a word, more real edu:ation. 



The present war will wake the people of these islands out of 

 their comfortable lethargy. They will see that to hold our 

 position in the modern world we require improved training, not 

 only in rifle shooting and artillery practice, but in every depart- 

 ment of activity. Other nations are leaping to the front and 

 spending public money lavishly to get their people better 

 educated, better fitted for seizing new ideas and applying them ;- 

 it will never do for us to lag behind. 



A few scholars, a few men of science, a few men of genius in 

 various branches, these will not save a nation. They extend its 

 fame, they adorn it, they stimulate it, and they reward it ; but 

 the backbone of a nation is the average man, the average man 

 of affairs, the man who does the business of the world. If he 

 breaks down or is crippled, the ornamental head cannot be sup- 

 ported. He may be a professional man or a merchant, or he 

 may be a manufacturer or a tradesmxn, but whatever he is, he 

 must not rest on his oars and be content with the tradition of 

 the past. We are entering a new century, many traditions of the 

 past are out of date, and the vital thing for the nation to realise, 

 if it is to maintain its hard won supremacy, is that antique 

 methods of education will no longer serve. They have had 

 their day ; they need not yet cease to be, but they must be sup- 

 plemented by others. The modern university must take care of 

 the average man. Plenty of long-established universities will 

 look after the high honours men, and in every department 

 highly specialised training is already available ; our artisans are 

 as skilled, each in his narrow groove, as it is possible for man 

 to be— marvels of mechanical skill they are ; but where is the 

 breadth of view, the elasticity, the power to modify, to invent,, 

 to reform, to seize new conditions, to adapt one's self to the 

 growing and changing needs of the world? A foreign order 

 comes to an engineering works of the present day with its sizes 

 expressed in decimals. Before the order can be given out it has- 

 to be interpreted into the clumsy sixteenths and thirty-seconds 

 and sixty-fourths of an inch, which alone the workman under- 

 stands. 



Nor is this portentous ignorance limited to workmen. 

 Directly the domain of science is touched, your ordinary school- 

 trained average man is stranded — he is ignorant even of the 

 scientific alphabet — scientific principles are a sealed book to 

 him : the divorce between science and practice, except in the 

 case of a few leading firms who have already wakened up like 

 their continental confreres, appears to be complete. 



The modern university must aim for a long time not at depth 

 so much as at breadth. Depth for the few, breadth for the many. 

 It must seek to turn out all-round men, and not specialists 

 only. 



Its graduates should not one of them be illiterate, not one of 

 them ignorant of the fundamental principles of science. Trained 

 scientific men they cannot be, in .-.ny numbers^the idea would 

 be absurd — but they should have sufficient education to under- 

 stand a scientific question and know where to go for the answer. 

 They should have lived for a time — even a short time — in the 

 atmosphere of science, and thereafter it will never be quite 

 strange to them. 



The scientific training need not be given solely in an academic 

 manner, aloof from all questions of practical interest. 



NO. 



599 VOL. 62] 



