224 MEMOIR OF AUGUSTUS DE MORGAN. 



1853. of daily life, in a rude state of co-operative power, made daily 

 life itself such a discipline of observation as we have now no 

 idea of. Every savage has all the knowledge of his tribe in 

 matters to be drawn from observation and applied in practice. 

 The man of the fifteenth century, much nearer to the savage 

 than ourselves, had a considerable share of it. The man of our 

 da}*- has just as little as he pleases, and no more than his indi- 

 vidual temperament and opportunities may lead him to acquire ; 

 the temperament not being fostered by education, and the oppor- 

 tunities being mostly subsequent to it. 



The great point, then, in which the old Universities ended by 

 ignoring the progress of the world around them, the great point 

 on which it might have been the privilege of a new one to show 

 them that the world could teach them something even on the 

 fundamentals of education, was the neglect of the discipline of 

 observation, of language as connected with it, and of inference 

 as immediately derived from it. And how has the University 

 of London fulfilled its especial mission ? It has granted the 

 existence of the deficiency, proclaimed its own intention to 

 provide a remedy, and set its alumni diligently to work to read 

 words and to look at diagrams about the way in which other 

 people have used their eyes and their hands. This is no ex- 

 aggeration. Because observation of phenomena had been neg- 

 lected, and ought to have been a part of all sound discipline, 

 the University of London demanded of its candidates a knowledge 

 of the manner in which those who have seen things for them- 

 selves describe them to others. 



For example, a candidate for the B.A. degree is required, 

 in addition to matters which enter the ancient disciplines, 

 to be examined in animal physiology. And he may pass this 

 examination without knowing more from his own observation 

 of what is under the skin of any animal, than he 'learns from 

 the words of a book or the lines of a drawing, which no one 

 can understand except he be familiar with the original object. 

 I will venture to say that a large majority of those who 

 have passed the examination in physiology know nothing about 

 the interior of the body from their own observation except that 

 blood follows a cut in the finger. I appeal to the examiners 

 whether it be not as I say, and whether the answers given do 

 not clearly show it. 



Thus, for the first time in the annals of liberal education, a 

 University has proclaimed that mere words, as words, with no 



