40 
NA TORE 
[ NOVEMBER 12, 1903 
as one scorns dishonesty or shuffling about the property of 
one’s neighbour, 
Nor is it less important that the imagination should be 
stimulated. Some stimulus will come from every study, 
honestly and thoroughly pursued ; according as it is greater 
or less, so is the greater or the smaller advantage to the 
student—not then alone, but throughout his life, as affect- 
ing his power, his influence, his usefulness. Above all, it 
is important to have what may be called the play of 
intellect between the teachers and the students, and, more 
particularly, in all liberty among the students themselves ; 
it makes for force of character, for steadiness of character, 
for command over powers, for fairness, for soundness of 
judgment, for proper confidence in one’s self, for proper 
consideration for others, for toleration, for knowledge of 
men, and for the seriousness of life. This phase of educa- 
tion is more important than mere instruction, and a uni- 
versity in which it is not secured provides but a maimed 
and stunted education. It stirs, it moves, it creates, the 
sentiment felt to the university; its operation has some- 
thing of the air of spiritual romance, something also of 
elusive mystery. It cannot be secured by regulations or 
endowments; it is a product of the spirit of the place and 
the spirit of the time, difficult to establish as a custom, a 
treasure beyond value when once established as a tradition. 
Each university in its own manner must evolve its own 
method of establishing this influence; the utmost that its 
formal regulations can achieve is the due provision for the 
intellectual needs of all classes of «students. 
RANGE OF INSTRUCTION. 
To discharge this duty, fraught with issues so grave to 
the good of the community, one necessity for the ideal 
university is that her courses of possible instruction should 
cover the whole field of human thought and _ intellectual 
activity, so that she can take her part in the diffusion and 
the extension of knowledge. She should possess such a 
collection of teachers that a student could obtain instruction 
in any department of knowledge, and could be trained in 
the use of any method by which knowledge is obtained. 
All sources of knowledge must be open to all students as 
they want them; all aids to learning must be provided. 
She must foster the liberal studies where ‘‘ nothing accrues 
of consequence beyond the using ’’; she must foster the 
useful studies where the revenue to be produced is of essential 
consequence. In every art, in every science, in any study 
which is neither an art nor a science, the spirit of inquiry 
should be encouraged; and the only dogma permitted to 
the teacher should be his guiding advice based upon know- 
ledge and experience. 
To those who are acquainted with the working of actual 
universities, my claims may be deemed excessive. But it 
is to be remembered that I am dealing with an ideal 
university, and there is no doubt that, in this form of human 
activity as (I imagine) in all other forms, working practice 
will be derived from the too lofty ideal by the omission of 
some of its constituents. Moreover, the omissions may 
reflect the wishes, the preferences, even the prejudices, of the 
founders and the supporters; they may also be some index 
of the neediness of the university in actual work. What- 
ever their cause, they will tend to vary from one centre to 
another, and thus each working university will acquire its 
individual character, and monotony of character will be 
avoided. 
Making this passing concession to the limitations that 
inevitably cramp the initial stages of great undertakings 
and sometimes shallow their whole course, let me return to 
my ideal university where all departments of knowledge 
are represented, and attempt some classification of these 
departments so as to give greater clearness and precision 
to some of its activities. They are set out in the order 
in which they arose naturally to me when considering them 
—no other significance, either of preference or importance, 
is implied in the order. 
Posit1oN OF THEOLOGICAL StupDIEs. 
As a preliminary let me deal with a matter which must 
be settled in the case of each university specifically and 
particularly—the attitude towards theology. The older 
among our foundations include its study within the curri- 
NO. 1776, VOL. 69] 
culum; the tendency of most of our new foundations is to 
exclude its study. My ideal university is to make provision 
for every department of knowledge, and, as theology is 
undoubtedly a branch of knowledge, she must make pro- 
vision for the teaching of theology. But in my university, 
thought is to be free from all fetters of official type, in- 
cluding those impcsed by the churches, and the spirit of 
inquiry is everywhere to be encouraged. These conditions 
exclude all that part of theology which is expounded 
definitely on the basis of dogma, and, so far as I see, admit 
all else. Thus dogmatics, apologetics, pastoral theology, 
would be excluded; exegesis, ecclesiastical history, the 
characteristics and distribution of religions, and the history 
of religion, would be included. Provision would have to be 
made for the teaching of these latter subjects, and it 
is more than probable that each of the teachers would 
have some definite dogmatic position. But of the intrusion 
of dogmatic views into the exposition of the retained sub- 
jects 1 am no more afraid than I should be of the intrusion 
of party politics into the academic exposition of history or 
(what is to be stirred into passionate interest in England 
in the very near future) into the academic exposition of 
economics. Nor to my mind is there any arbitrary quality 
in the action which would include a portion of theology 
and leave the rest to be obtained, presumably in some 
theological school of the appropriate dogmatic hue. My 
ideal university is to include the whole field of human 
knowledge; but it is not to include everything based on 
human belief or beliefs, any more than it is to include 
everything based on human activity, and I do not require 
it to make provision for the whole training of a dogmatic 
theologian any more than to make provision for the whole 
training of (say) a surgeon or an engineer. 
BRANCHES OF KNOWLEDGE, SUBJECTIVE TO MAN. 
Having now expounded this opinion as frankly as is con- 
sistent with the brevity imposed upon me by circumstances, 
I pass to a review of other activities of the university which 
usually do not give rise to contentious difficulties. As a 
beginning must be made somewhere, let us begin with man. 
We may regard him as engaged in the conduct of his own 
existence, possessed of mental faculties, directed by certain 
tastes, exercising mental activities, standing (either as an 
individual or as one of a group) in multifarious relations 
with other men; he is placed amid a universe, and there 
are the phenomena of that universe, living or inert, outside 
him. Each of these qualities, if they may be so styled, 
gives rise to a branch or to several branches of knowledge. 
Our first quality of man as an existing being has regard 
to his conceptions of the general nature of knowledge and 
existence as such, and to the theory of his conduct of his 
own existence; the branches of knowledge related to those 
conceptions and that conduct are most simply described 
by the titles of metaphysics and of moral philosophy or 
ethics. 
His next quality pictured him as possessed of mental 
faculties. The range of these faculties, their detailed 
activities, their modes and methods of working, to mention 
only some of their features, give rise to the branches of 
‘knowledge described by the titles of psychology and logic. 
In theory, there are close relations between logic and mathe- 
matics; in practice, particularly the older practice, mathe- 
matics as a subject has usually been derived from the study 
of nature. 
Man then was indicated as directed by certain tastes; 
in this indication, it is mainly his aesthetic faculty that is 
contemplated. The branches of knowledge associated with 
the zesthetic element in man are conveniently summarised 
in the title of the fine arts, meaning thereby the arts of 
music, architecture, sculpture, and painting, alike in their 
industrial and their intellectual aspects. 
When we contemplate the quality of man as connected 
with the exercise of his mental activities, not in the mode of 
the exercise but in its results, we are practically face to 
face with the intellectual creations of all individuals in 
the aggregate. The section of knowledge which thus arises 
is so vast that there is difficulty in finding a single title to 
describe it. Taking account of such limitations upon the 
range of this knowledge as are implied in the other activi- 
ties of man which have been explicitly recited, I shall 
perhaps most simply describe it as literature. 
