42 UNIVERSITIES I ACTUAL AND IDEAL. [LECT. 



" The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are 

 the hands of Esau." Every day I hear " Cause," 

 "Law," "Force," " Vitality," spoken of as entities, 

 by people who can enjoy Swift's joke about the 

 meat-roasting quality of the smoke-jack, and comfort 

 themselves with the reflection that they are not even 

 as those benighted schoolmen. 



Well, this great system had its day, and then it 

 was sapped and mined by two influences. The first 

 was the study of classical literature, which familiarised 

 men with methods of philosophising ; with concep- 

 tions of the highest Good; with ideas of the order 

 of Nature ; with notions of Literary and Historical 

 Criticism; and, above all, with visions of Art, of a 

 kind which not only would not fit into the scholastic 

 scheme, but showed them a pre-Christian, and indeed 

 altogether un-Christian world, of such grandeur and 

 beauty that they ceased to think of any other. They 

 were as men who had kissed the Fairy Queen, and 

 wandering with her in the dim loveliness of the under- 

 world, cared not to return to the familiar ways of 

 home and fatherland, though they lay, at arm's length, 

 overhead. Cardinals were more familiar with Virgil 

 than with Isaiah; and Popes laboured, with great 

 success, to re-paganise Eome. 



The second influence was the slow, but sure, 

 growth of the physical sciences. It was discovered 

 that some results of speculative thought, of immense 

 practical and theoretical importance, can be verified 

 by observation ; and are always true, however severely 

 they may be tested. Here, at any rate, was know- 



