VIII UNIVERSITIES : ACTUAL AND IDEAL 211 



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 ourselves or from other people without a rigid 

 scrutiny by negative criticism ; letting no fallacy, 

 or incoherence, or confusion of thought, step by 

 unperceived ; above all, to insist upon having the 

 meaning of a word clearly understood before using 

 it, and the meaning of a proposition before 

 assenting to it ; these are the lessons we learn " 

 from workers in Science. " With all this vigorous 

 management of the negative element, they inspire 

 no scepticism about the reality of truth or in- 

 difference to its pursuit. The noblest enthusiasm, 

 both for the search after truth and for applying it 

 to its highest uses, pervades those writers." " In 

 cultivating, therefore," science as an essential 

 ingredient in education, "we are all the while 



p 2 



