30 TROPICAL EDUCATION. 



from thoir indeterminate fathers? What need of 

 carpentry where a few bamboos, cut down at random, 

 can be fastened together with thongs into a comfortable 

 chair? What use of pottery where calabashes hang on 

 every tree, and cocoa-nuts, with the water fresh and 

 pure within, supply at once the cup, and the filter, and 

 the Apollinaris within? 



Of course I don't mean to assert, either, that this 

 tropical university will in itself suffice for all the needs of 

 educated oi- rather of educable men. It must be taken, 

 hien eiitendiL, as a supplementary course to the Literte 

 Plumauiores. There are things which can only be learnt 

 in the crowded haunts and cities of men — in London, 

 Paris, New York, Vienna. There are things which can only 

 be learnt in the centres of culture or of artistic handicraft 

 — in Oxford, Munich, Florence, Venice, Eome. There 

 is only one Grand Canal and only one Pitti Palace. We 

 must have Shakespeare, Homer, Catullus, Dante ; we 

 must hEive Phidias, Era Angelico, Rafael, Mendelssohn; 

 we must have Aristotle, Newton, Laplace, Spencer, 

 But after all these, and before all these, there is some- 

 thing more left to learn. Having first read them, we 

 must read ourselves out of them. We must forget all 

 this formal modern life ; we must break away from this 

 cramped, cold, northern world ; we nmst find om-selves 

 face to face at last, in Pacific isles or African forests, 

 with the underlying truths of simple naked nature. For 

 that, in its perfection, we must goto the Tropics ; and 

 there, we shall learn and unlearn much, coming back, 

 no doubt, with shattered faiths and broken gods, and 

 strangely disconcerted European prejudices, but looking 



