30 TROPICAL EDUCATION. 



from their indeterminate fathers? What need of 

 carpentry where a few bamboos, cut down at random, 

 can be fastened together with thongs into a comfortable 

 chair ? What use of pottery where calabashes hang on 

 every tree, and cocoa-nuts, with the water fresh and 

 pure within, supply at once the cup, and the filter, and 

 the Apollinaris within ? 



Of course I don't mean to assert, either, that this 

 tropical university will in itself suffice for all the needs of 

 educated or rather of educable men. It must be taken, 

 bien entendu, as a supplementary course to the Literge 

 Humaniores. There are things which can only be learnt 

 in the crowded haunts and cities of men in London, 

 Paris, New York, Vienna. There are things which can only 

 be learnt in the centres of culture or of artistic handicraft 

 in Oxford, Munich, Florence, Venice, Eome. There 

 is only one Grand Canal and only one Pitti Palace. We 

 must have Shakespeare, Homer, Catullus, Dante ; we 

 must have Phidias, Fra Angelico, Rafael, Mendelssohn ; 

 we must have Aristotle, Newton, Laplace, Spencer. 

 But after all these, and before all these, there is some- 

 thing more left to learn. Having first read them, we 

 must read ourselves out of them. We must forget all 

 this formal modern life ; we must break away from this 

 cramped, cold, northern world ; we must find ourselves 

 face to face at last, in Pacific isles or African forests, 

 with the underlying truths of simple naked nature. For 

 that, in its perfection, we must go to the Tropics ; and 

 there, we shall learn and unlearn much, coming back, 

 no doubt, with shattered faiths and broken gods, and 

 strangely disconcerted European prejudices, but looking 



