214 
IGA T ORE 
[ DECEMBER 31, 1903 
’ has no more to do with education than the two hind buttons 
on our coats or the wigs of our judges have to do with 
convenience. These three kinds of school training—in 
one’s own language and literature, in the principles of 
natural science, in common-sense computation—are absent 
from all public schools at the present time; it seems mere 
impudence in me to make them the only compulsory forms 
of training for men who are to enter a university. Until 
this is done, I think that most of the endowment of science 
scholarships is quite wasted. 
I agreed to give this address because I knew that Sir 
: Norman Lockyer intended in his British Association address 
to propose a very large Government endowment of the uni- 
versities. At first sight his suggestion that 24 millions of 
pounds should be devoted to this purpose seemed ridiculous, 
but careful study has brought many thoughtful business 
men round to the idea; it is not utopian, it has actually a 
. good chance of being carried out. 
; ties only through their knowledge of Oxford. 
I saw, as many of my friends see, that the one thing 
which may wreck the project is the reputation of Oxford. 
Our rulers who have to grant the money know of universi- 
It is hardly 
possible for them to understand what we mean by a true 
university, which would give to every student real breadth 
of culture, real mental training. They may be brought to 
see it if Oxford men are in earnest in trying to develop 
Oxford on scientific as opposed to unscientific and_ ill- 
regulated lines; if the powers of light organise themselves 
as scientifically as the powers of darkness are organised. 
But there are certain intellectual movements going on in | 
our nation which may force our rulers to grant the money ; 
Oxford seems to know little about them and to care less; 
they seem to her to be merely a new untying of the bags 
of A®olus; it is my belief that if Oxford knew more about 
them she would build an altar to the goddess of Fear and 
offer sacrifices upon it, yea, burnt offerings of some of her 
best-loved possessions. 
Oxford has a well earned prestige and still attracts all 
young men of intellect, but these new intellectual forces may 
quite quickly destroy the reputation which has been built 
up during centuries. For example, we have a new kind 
of secondary school, of which some five hundred have been 
established all over the country in the last few years. I 
myself think the science schools, scheduled as A schools, 
to be much the best of them, but the most numerous of 
them are the B schools, in which there is some natural 
science taught through boys’ own research, but the time 
devoted to it is not much more than what is sufficient to 
enable us to say that in these schools boys are greatly 
emancipated from the old Oxford limitations. These 
schools before their emancipation sent many a fine scholar 
and mathematician to Oxford and Cambridge. They still 
rank below the great public schools. What is aimed at is 
an education which may suit any kind of boy, a real liberal 
education such as the older schools know nothing of. It 
is even hoped that shortly somebody in one of these schools 
will discover how English may be taught to English boys. 
All these, like the science schools, are due to the work of 
Sir William Abney. Now the boys of these schools, when 
they leave, wish to complete their education on the lines 
on which they have been working so far; are these ex- 
ceptionally able students to be told that Oxford cannot 
complete that education? Few people seem to be aware 
that the growth of these schools indicates a great revolu- 
tion ; anybody who notes their rapid growth must feel sure 
that in a few years no secondary schools, except a few of 
the public schools, will continue to work under Oxford 
traditions. It ought to be noticed that unless boys in 
future are prepared on these new lines, it is not worth their 
while to enter Woolwich or Sandhurst, or the Admiralty 
colleges, because they will not be able to follow the higher 
instruction there given, and must drop out of the race for 
commissions. It is evident that the days of special army 
and other classes in schools are numbered. If Oxford by 
holding aloof from this movement ceases to influence the 
majority of the secondary schools, it will lose its influence 
over a great body of people of the middle class. 
I have already mentioned another great movement from 
which Oxford is holding aloof, the movement for technical 
education the basis of which is the sort of study trifled 
NO. 1783, VOL. 69] 
with, feared, and hated at Oxford, natural science. It has 
spread from the very lower classes to the lower middle 
classes, and better and better buildings and apparatus, and 
better paid teachers indicate the higher and higher social 
position of the pupils of the technical schools. A few 
Oxford men have greatly helped in starting both of these 
great movements, and Oxford as a whole, if she cared, 
might be in a position to take a leading part in them. She 
has an influence now due to the easily interpreted fact that 
Oxford men occupy many of the higher posts connected 
with both of them. 
It is not only that Oxford keeps aloof from technical 
education, but she keeps aloof from the very much greater 
thing of which this movement is only a symptom, namely, 
the phenomenon that trade and manufacture are no longer 
left to themselves as they used to be; they are being 
organised on scientific lines in all countries. She has always 
ostentatiously held herself aloof from manufactures and 
commerce. It is almost incomprehensible that a university 
aiming at breadth of culture should scorn those things which 
keep England in her high position, give value to the real 
estate on which Oxford’s own revenues depend, and 
differentiate Oxford from Beyrout. I feel sure that this 
attitude ought to be quite carefully veiled if Oxford is to 
have such a share in the 24 millions as her prestige would 
otherwise warrant her demanding. 
The truest stories about man are the fairy stories; they 
are true of all times, of all races of men, and the truest 
fairy story is that which tells how men who look back and 
not forward are turned into lumps of rock or pillars of salt. 
I want the forces of light at Oxford to organise them- 
selves to teach Oxford how she may become worthy to 
maintain the reputation which she earned so well in the 
past. Her great glory is not in her defence of lost causes 
as many men think. Was the movement started by Roger 
Bacon a bad cause? Is it a lost cause? Has the movement 
started by Grocyn and Colet become a lost cause? Has 
the movement started by those Oxford men who founded 
the Royal Society become a lost cause? Are the names of 
Wycliffe and Wesley forgotten? Have the reforms started 
by Stanley, Jowett and Pattison in our own times become 
lost causes? Not yet! The influence of Oxford over in 
tellectual England used to be supreme, it is still enormous; 
it rests with the young Oxford men of the present day 
who know something of history te decide whether this in- 
fluence may or may not become a cause lost beyond all 
chance of finding again. 
A NEW GERMAN BOTANICAL SOCIETY* 
THE publication of the first report of the meeting in 
Berlin of the Society of Germans interested in the 
Study of Systematic Botany and Plant Geography calls for 
more than passing notice. The society owes. its creation 
to a well-founded cause, and is indicative of a response to 
that spirit of colonisation which has shown itself in 
Germany more and more during the past thirty years. Im 
the first half of the nineteenth century the British Govern- 
ment, merchants and others were calling out for inform- 
ation as to the character of the flora of our colonies, and, 
as a result, British botanists were mainly engaged in the 
study of systematic botany, while the German botanists 
were occupied in the investigation of the structure, 
physiology and pathology of the individual plant, with 
results in each case well known to all serious students of 
botany. 
The German systematists do not take a prominent place 
at the meetings of the German Association for the Advance- 
ment of Science, and though in their new society they pro- 
pose cooperation, if possible, with it and with the Deutsche 
Botanische Gesellschaft, they seem to feel the necessity of 
a separate society to meet the requirements of their own 
branch of botanical study, which, during the last twenty ° 
years, has made enormous strides. Explorers have been 
sent out into all parts of the globe, and not simply to the 
German colonies. Listening to the papers from day to day 
it seemed that, so far as the conference was concerned, the 
1 Bericht ti. d. Erste Zusammenkunft der freien Vereinigung der system- 
atischen Botaniker u., Pflanzengeographen zu Berlin. Pp. 83. (Leipzig: 
W. Engelmann, 1903.) 
