NOovEMBER 12, 1903] 
NATURE 
39 
aims, the aniversity should be free from all external 
censorship of doctrine; it should also be free from all 
external control over the range, or the modes, or the sub- 
jects, of teaching. Above all, thought should be free from 
fetters of official type: whether political, from the State; 
or ecclesiastical, from the churches; or civic, from the 
community; or pedantic, from the corporate repressive 
action of the university itself. In its establishment, the 
amplest powers that wisdom can suggest should be con- 
ferred upon it. In working out its intellectual salvation, the 
exercise of those powers should be vested in select bodies 
of fit persons, sufficiently small in number to be efficient, 
yet large enough in number to prevent degeneration into 
an intellectual clique, changing sufficiently from time to 
time to prevent the dominance of merely personal policies, 
and representative enough to be in touch alike with the 
experience of the past and with aspirations for the future 
so far as these have taken shape or have acquired definition. 
Access to the facilities of the university should be open 
to all duly qualified persons, without consideration of sex, 
without consideration of station in life, without consider- 
ation of intellectual beliefs, whether theological, political, 
or otherwise. The university should have the power of 
requiring both a minimum of qualification and a variety of 
qualifications to be satisfied by an applicant before ad- 
mission to the status of student. Some test of qualification 
had to be imposed upon medizeval students, for Latin, then 
still something of a living language, was the one language 
of learning—and workers in science can sigh that it ever 
ceased to be so. That some test of qualification still is 
desirable probably is obvious to anyone who accepts my 
view of what university education should be. In my view, 
the school should prepare for the university, and education 
in the university should be, not something distinct from the 
school education, but rather its development, its amplifi- 
cation, and (on some issues) its complement. Briefly stated, 
the preliminary training should have been finished, and 
only those whose attainments show that they are qualified 
to profit by further training should be admitted to the 
courses of university study. 
QUALIFICATION OF STUDENTS. 
As this limitation is important, will you be patient with 
me while I make a digression from my main topic and 
indicate the kind of minimum of qualification that I, if an 
autocrat, should exact in order to have one security (neces- 
sary, though not sufficient) that the students shall be not 
unworthy of a seat of learning? Besides the usual elements 
of reading, writing, and arithmetic (and I would add draw- 
ing to them), his studies should have included subjects that 
would train and develop some power of expression, some 
power of reasoning, some power of observation. To give 
him some power of expression, I would use his own language 
in the first place, initiating him into the mysteries of 
grammar and analysis through it alone, giving him some 
acquaintance with selections from the best of its literature, 
and, above all, practising him regularly in the art of com- 
position in his own language. Then, after a certain stage, 
and in order to give him, while still at school, a more 
accurate literary training, he should be drilled in at least 
one foreign language, so as to be able to read it with ease 
and accuracy; the contrast of the two languages in idiom, 
diction, method, and manner, should emphasise his critical 
appreciation of his own, and increase, therefore, his control 
over it. If he can spare time for only one foreign language, 
my choice would be a modern language; if he can spare 
time for two foreign languages, let Latin be one of them; 
if he can spare time for more, he is in the way of being a 
scholar, and he needs none of my presumptuous directions on 
this head. To give him some power of reasoning, I would 
use the elements of mathematics; his algebra should be 
built upon his arithmetic, without the fatuous artificialities 
that disfigure text-books and examinations, though happily 
in a lessening degree; above all, he should have a training 
in geometry, beginning with experimental work so as to 
familiarise him with the matter, and gradually introducing 
“the processes of geometrical reasoning; and if he can be 
taught the elements of mechanics, beginning also with an 
- experimental basis, sc much the better. To give him 
some power of observation, I would use some of the 
NO. 1776, VOL. 69] 
experimental sciences; my own choice wuld be the rudi- 
ments of experimental physics or inorganic chemistry. But 
more than all these are wanted; all the studies thus far 
prescribed are for the purpose of sharpening his wits, and, 
in the process, they will develop his intelligence. The 
latter must be developed also in other ways, and to my 
mind one of the best of ways is to give him a general know- 
ledge of the history of his country, a general knowledge 
of the geography of the world, and (if possible) some rudi- 
mentary knowledge of the modern history of neighbouring 
countries. 
Such a programme provides the elements of a liberal 
education. A youth, so educated, is ready for the technical 
training now needed for so many of the occupations of 
life, and even if he does not devote more time to the con- 
tinuance of his studies, he is provided with the elements 
of such intellectual interests as should make him an intelli- 
gent man and an intelligent citizen. Also, such a pro- 
gramme is practicable for the average boy; no exceptional 
ability is needed to have completed such a course at the 
age of fifteen or sixteen. I am not prepared to say that 
the average boy at any school in England will have achieved 
this programme before he is sixteen; if I may judge from 
some not entirely laudatory criticisms that are openly ex- 
pressed from time to time and remain unrebutted, it seems 
to be the fact that the average boy at a public school 
does not achieve such a programme or its equivalent before 
he is sixteen. But I am optimistic enough to believe that, 
in the future as in the past, improvements can come even 
in English education, and meanwhile I am content to claim 
that the programme of training which has been sketched 
is not merely possible, but is practicable also, within the 
time allowed. 
Groups OF STUDENTS. 
Let us assume, therefore, that we have an ample supply 
of average students who have undergone some not inade- 
quate preliminary training, and, as hopeful assumptions are 
encouraging, let us further assume that there is more than a 
sprinkling of students with abilities well above the average. 
In coming to our ideal university, which is eager to receive 
them, the students are actuated by varied kinds of needs 
and desires. Some—many of them, I should like to think— 
mean to devote themselves to one or other of the different 
forms of practical business, not intending to use their 
university education professionally, but preparing to take 
their part in maintaining and elevating the tone of the 
community. All the professions and callings, -whether 
learned or technical, are to be recruited from among the 
students when once they have been trained. Some have 
the intellectual ambition, more or less defined as yet, 
ultimately to devote themselves to a life of learning in their 
own university by preference, yet, if not there, then in 
some other. There are men intent upon the ministry of 
religion; there are men intent upon the public service of 
the State. Last in this enumeration, there are the men of 
genius, as yet unproclaimed, who are to find in the uni- 
versity that training which will gradually reveal to them 
their powers, and-that stimulus which will inspire them to 
the highest service of mankind as the discoverers and the 
thinkers of their generation. To all these men the uni- 
versity must give the means and the opportunities of 
obtaining the knowledge adapted to their several intellectual 
needs. 
Spirit OF UNIVERSITY TRAINING. 
Of course, every person would be prepared to acknow- 
ledge that a university education includes more than even 
the most industrious and praiseworthy absorption of know- 
ledge, and much of the influence of a university depends 
upon the spirit and the circumstances in which knowledge 
is given and received. There is an education of character 
as well as of mind, and the two can be achieved simul- 
taneously by the due conduct of studies. | Thoroughness 
must be the dominating quality in every study; difficulties 
which arise must be solved, not evaded; proofs must be 
sternly examined and only accepted if found valid and 
clearly comprehended; truth, and not merely comfortable 
or convenient doctrine, must be the object of search; and 
all must be done in a spirit that would scorn dishonesty or 
shuffling about the affairs of the mind as contemptuously 
