i8 THE MODERN UNIVERSITY MOVEMENT 



founded, as the words go, ' in particular to provide instruction 

 in such sciences and arts as are applicable or ancillary to the 

 manufacturing, mining, engineering, and agricultural industries 

 of the County of York '. In the promotion of studies nothing 

 succeeds like success. Kindle the intellect at any point and 

 the fire will spread. You may be intent upon teaching science 

 that is 'ancillary to manufacturing industry', but as your 

 students grow there will be rebels who cry out for philosophy 

 and Greek, because their hunger takes that form. The 

 different tastes and aptitudes will assert themselves, and be 

 they ever so remote from those you had in view, you find 

 somehow that in gratifying them, you have added an intellectual 

 light whose rays will reach and illumine the quarters where 

 they were least expected. 



I know of only one danger that may yet threaten our 

 university, and I am happy to say that I think it remote. If 

 any man, or body of men, should acquire the power to step 

 in among us and direct that our teaching should comprise 

 anything that partook of sectarianism, then indeed I should 

 despair. It is a proposal that might come in a fair and an 

 alluring form, but it is one which, in my opinion, should 

 be resisted at any cost whatever. I am sure I need not 

 enlarge upon this subject. I am sure I need not protest 

 that to take this view does not necessarily imply a disregard 

 of that third sphere of human activity to which I have so far 

 hardly alluded, I mean the sphere of moral activity. 



This leads me to the last part of my subject. In many 

 ways the most anxious question connected with our new 

 universities is this what impress are they going to make on 

 the whole man, on the morals and character of our students ? 

 I am willing to concede that we here touch the most important 

 side of the whole question and face our greatest difficulties ; 

 but even here I am not the least disposed to repine. 



No one who has the least knowledge of Oxford and 



