598 
NATURE 
[OcToBER 19, 1899 
ON THE CHARACTERISTICS OF A 
UNIVERSITY. 
“THE beginning of a new academical year is one of those 
periods of sudden change which must leave its mark for 
good or bad on every university and college in the land. 
Well-known faces of those who have been prominent in work 
or sport are missing. New recruits are taking, with halting 
steps, their first lessons in the drill which is soon to become so 
familiar. In a few days they will be undergoing their ‘‘ baptism 
of fire” in struggles wider and keener than any in which they 
have yet been engaged; and in which each, according as he 
bears himself, must either add to or diminish, be it by ever so 
little, the position which his college holds in the eyes of the 
world. At such a period we naturally halt for a moment, and 
‘before we face the future, cast our eyes backward. 
One conspicuous change has taken place in the past session. 
Sir John Donnelly has retired from the permanent headship of 
the Department of Science and Art, and has been replaced 
under new conditions by Captain Abney. It would be contrary 
to all the wholesome traditions which govern the conduct of 
servants of the Crown if I attempted to discuss these important 
events. TI will therefore only say, in words which are colder 
than my feelings, that we wish our late chief long life, health 
and happiness in the rest to which the strenuous service of many 
years has entitled him ; and that we welcome as his successor 
one who is not only a distinguished public servant, but a dis- 
tinguished man of science. 
Two losses, I must mehtion, of men who, though unknown to 
each other, were both known to many of us. Both had, in dif- 
ferent ways, deserved well of the college. Both have passed 
away since the last term ended. But though alike in these 
respects, their fates were strangely different. 
Sir Edward Frankland, for long Professor of Chemistry in 
this college, had touched the topmost rungs of the ladder of 
scientific fame. The Royal Society bestowed upon him its 
highest honour—the Copley Medal. The French Academy of 
Sciences had given him the highest distinction it can confer 
upon one who is not a Frenchman, by placing his name on the 
select list of eight foreign members. Happy in the work of his 
life, he was no less happy in the opportunity of death. Theend 
came, without long previous suffering or slackening of mental 
power, in the midst of the holiday haunts which must, as life 
faded, have recalled some of its brightest hours. The Royal 
College of Science will remember him as one of the earliest and 
the most distinguished members of its staff. 
The other name I would mention is that of one who was re- 
cently numbered among our students. Ernest Harrison gained the 
Associateship in Physics a year ago, taking the first place in the 
final examination. He had previously won a scholarship at 
Trinity College, Cambridge. His career here gave reason to 
believe that his future would be successful ; but his early death 
has quenched the hopes of his teachers and his friends. The 
fact that he has died a very young and therefore a comparatively 
unknown man, makes it all the more the sad duty of us who 
knew him to record the promise of his youth. 
Turning from the past, the changes which loom largest 
in the immediate future are the erection of the new buildings 
and the creation of what will in effect be a new university. Of 
the former I will only say that they will be on a scale not 
unworthy of the largest city in the world; but the establishment 
of a teaching university must be so pregnant with good or ill 
that I shall offer no apology for returning, by a somewhat 
different line of approach, to a subject on which Sir Norman 
Lockyer dwelt last year. 
Let us then, in the first place, ask what are the chie, notes 
which distinguish from all others the mode of preparation for 
the work of life which should be characteristic of a university. 
Put shortly, I take it that two notes are predominant above 
all the rest. The first is that a university is a place where 
education is combined with the advancement of knowledge ; 
the second, that the teaching of a university is based upon the 
principle that knowledge is desirable for the influence which 
knowledge and the search for knowledge exert upon ourselves, 
and not merely for the power which they confer of improving 
our external surroundings. The first of these characteristics dis- 
*s the university from a school; the second from a 
1op or a college with purely technical aims. 
\ddress delivered at the opening of the Royal College of Science, 
Ox. er 5, by Prof. Riicker, F.R.S. 
NO. 1564, VOL. 60] 
I shall say very little on the fact, which no one will dispute, 
that it is the duty of a university to advance knowledge. To 
do us justice, we of the Royal College of Science have not 
been unmindful of this duty. It is impossible to speak of the 
present or more recent past, but I may be permitted to say that 
a college which has numbered Huxley, Stokes and Frankland 
among the members of its staff will have forgotten all the 
teaching of its earlier history if it ever fails to satisfy the first 
test of fitness for a university status. I only hope that the 
schemes which are being mooted for founding new research pro- 
fessorships do not veil an attempt to place in other hands that 
part of the work of the London colleges which is specially 
characteristic of a university. London needs a multiplication 
of teachers on a sufficiently large scale to enable them to conduct 
both teaching and research, not the creation of separate castes 
of teachers and investigators. ’ 
Let me turn next to the second note of a university, viz. 
that it insists that knowledge has a value apart from the com- 
mercial or utilitarian objects for which it may be used. 
In this capacity a university maintains, or ought to maintain, 
a constant protest against the view that a man and _his 
knowledge are to be measured by their money value alone. 
This view was never more clearly expressed than by Colonel 
Diver, according to whom the aristocracy of New York con- 
sisted ‘‘ of intelligence, sir, . . . of intelligence and virtue. And 
of their necessary consequence in this republic—dollars, sir.” 
It is needless to deny that ‘‘dollars” are often the reward ox 
intelligence and virtue. In the case of most men, the search 
after them must necessarily be a matter of importance ; but 
this fact is too often used to make preparation for the business 
side of life the only or the chief end of education. 
As I was writing these lines a number’ of Lzterature reached 
me, in which there is a review of a work by an assistant pro- 
fessor of the history and art of teaching in the Harvard 
University. This gentleman proposes to have ‘‘ commercial 
courses” in all the schools. The purpose of these courses is to 
be, not merely ‘‘to train a youth,to an appreciation of the 
functions of business and business practice in our modern life,” 
and not merely to ‘‘ inform him as to the history of industry and 
trade,” but also to ‘awaken in him a profound interest in busi- 
ness as such,” and to ‘‘train him to keep his eyes open to 
business possibilities.” 
Before I have done you will understand my reasons for agree- 
ing with the reviewer that this is a ‘‘ hideous educational pro- 
gramme.” For the moment I will content myself with saying 
that it is based upon a one-sided view of life. There can be no 
question but that the business element is important, but a uni- 
versity is a corrective to the tendency to regard money as the 
only standard of value. This it does by inviting us to study and 
to care for things which we must admit are important and 
beautiful, but which we may not be able to convert into coin. 
But, you may ask, if this is so, will not the admission a 
technical colleges such as is, in part, our own, be inconsistent 
with your idea of a university ? 
To this I answer that, while it is possible that the desire to 
master the practical applications of knowledge might crush the 
desire to know things which are worthy to be known though 
not of immediate commercial advantage, the men who are 
managing the best technical colleges are aiming at leavening 
the technicalities of a profession with the love of knowledge. 
Example will illustrate what I mean better than precept. The 
late Dr. Hopkinson was a successful engineer, sought after to 
superintend great undertakings. Busy in the office and the 
law courts, he nevertheless was always investigating the secrets 
of nature, and wrote his name large in the Zyavsactions of the 
Royal Society. Many others, whom in this room I need not 
mention, are animated by the same spirit. I think, therefore, 
that the welcome which several of our universities have extended 
and are extending to such men and to their students is a 
legitimate recognition of the fact that they have effected a real 
extension of the boundaries of the region in which the love of 
knowledge for its own sake prevails. It would be a disaster if 
the spirit of business and commerce were to dominate a 
university. It will be a triumph if the love of science and the 
love of culture were spread from the technical college to the 
machine shop and the factory. 
And this brings me to my next point, to another and more 
subtle question, in some respects similar to that we have been 
discussing. 
In life there is a competition, not merely between commercial 
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