II.] UNIVERSITIES I ACTUAL AND IDEAL. 43 



ledge, to the certainty of which no authority could 

 add, or take away, one jot or tittle, and to which the 

 tradition of a thousand years was as insignificant as 

 the hearsay of yesterday. To the scholastic system, 

 the study of classical literature might be inconvenient 

 and distracting, but it was possible to hope that it 

 could be kept within bounds. Physical science, on 

 the other hand, was an irreconcilable enemy, to be 

 excluded at all hazards. The College of Cardinals 

 has not distinguished itself in Physics or Physiology ; 

 and no Pope has, as yet, set up public laboratories in 

 the Vatican. 



People do not always formulate the beliefs on 

 which they act. The instinct of fear and dislike is 

 quicker than the reasoning process; and I suspect 

 that, taken in conjunction with some other causes, 

 such instinctive aversion is at the bottom of the long 

 exclusion of any serious discipline in the physical 

 sciences from the general curriculum of Universities ; 

 while, on the other hand, classical literature has been 

 gradually made the backbone of the Arts course. 



I am ashamed to repeat here what I have said 

 elsewhere, in season and out of season, respecting the 

 value of Science as knowledge and discipline. But 

 the other day I met with some passages in the 

 Address to another Scottish University, of a great 

 thinker, recently lost to us, which express so fully, 

 and yet so tersely, the truth in this matter, that I am 

 fain to quote them : 



" To question all things ; never to turn away 

 from any difficulty ; to accept no doctrine either from 



