a, 
46 THE RELATION OF UNIVERSITIES TO 
temporaries and their successors. As years roll on it acquires 
the added graces of antiquity and becomes something almost 
sacred, something that would be profaned by change; until at 
last it is found to be standing hopelessly apart from the 
human needs it was intended to subserve. For happily . 
humanity itself is progressive; change, unceasing change, is 
the law of progress, and what fitted the conditions of life © 
a century ago cannot be expected to fit them equally to-day. 
These remarks apply, I believe, with full force to education, 
and it is surely incumbent on us to be continually asking 
whether our educational system is in conformity with the con- 
ditions and legitimate needs of the day. 
The universities stand at the head of our educational 
system, and from them flows the intellectual streams to 
irrigate the plains where men do their varied tasks. It is at 
the universities that all types of education should receive their 
sanction ‘and their inspiration. It is not for universities to 
fold their arms and say, ‘7’y sués, 7y reste’, and to look with 
disdain upon the efforts of the multitude to get for themselves 
through the zealous aid of Government officials, municipal 
authorities, and men of business, something adapted to their 
new intellectual needs and appetites—something they cannot 
find in the rigid articles of their educational hierarchy. If 
the universities do this, they may, indeed, preserve a splendid 
isolation and do great things in many ways, which it is my 
last wish to belittle; but they will leave undone what is 
essential if they are to exert their proper influence, and if the 
balance of life is to be preserved between thought and action ; 
and they will continue to divert from industry intellectual 
talent that is born in it, and that would go back to strengthen, 
enlighten, and ennoble it if the talent were well directed, and 
if it found that in the high courts of learning even techno- 
logies had an honourable place. 
The isolation of professional or technological studies, and 
