600 
NATURE 
[OcToBER 19, 1899 
underlay the teaching of Emerson and Pater, but nothing is more 
certain than that neither Emerson nor Pater meant the passages 
I have read to be taken in the literal sense which might be 
ascribed to them. Even in the teaching of science it is some- 
times necessary for the teacher to aim at being clear rather than 
correct ; to force home the appreciation of the nature of some 
central truth by stating it as boldly as possible, and by sacrificing 
the pedantic exactitude which would insist that in its very first 
presentment it must be hedged about with every qualification 
and safeguard which long experience could suggest. 
This was not the policy of the American teacher. Having 
set the mind in motion he left to its natural ‘‘ after working” 
the discovery of qualifications and safeguards. 
““Emerson,” says Mr. John Morley, ‘‘ has not worked out 
his answers to these eternal enigmas, for ever reproducing 
themselves in all ages, in such a form as to defy the logician’s 
challenge. He never shrinks from inconsistent propositions, 
He was unsystematic on principle. ‘He thought that truth has 
so many facets that the best we can do is to notice each in 
turn, without troubling ourselves whether they agree.’”’ 
No better evidence of the truth of this remark could be 
adduced than Emerson’s treatment of the relative importance of 
special knowledge and general culture. We have heard him 
on the one side. Let us listen to what he has to say on the 
other. 
“He only is a well-made man who has a good determination. 
-\nd the end of culture is not to destroy this. God forbid ! but 
to train away all impediment and mixture, and leave nothing 
but pure power. Our student must have a style and determina- 
tion, and bea master in his own specialty. But, having this, 
he must put it behind him. He must have a catholicity, a power 
to see with a free and disengaged look every object.” 
Nor by putting ‘behind him” did Emerson mean that 
the student was to devote all his earlier years to one form of 
intellectual effort : and that when this had brought him compe- 
tence or fame, he might turn for relaxation to what he had 
hitherto neglected—to art or science or literature, as the case 
might be. 
“Culture,” he says elsewhere, ‘‘ cannot begin too early. In 
talking with scholars I observe that they lost on ruder com- 
panions those years of boyhood which alone could give imagina- 
tive literature a religious and infinite quality in their esteem.” 
Me who has pored too closely and too long over one study 
cannot in a moment cast aside the fetters which the years have 
woven round him, and rise up, like Samson, a terror to the 
Philistines. The intellectual sectarian cannot by a sudden act 
of will or process of conversion become the intellectual 
catholic. As well might he hope that the muscles which have 
been disused for years should suddenly rival the sturdy frame of 
the athlete, that the bent back should become straight, and the 
vision of the wearied eyes keen. Mental, like physical powers, 
are atrophied by disuse. The arts of seeing something of 
many things and all of one must be cultivated at the same time, 
or side by side. 
And Pater, like Emerson, trusted to the intelligence of the 
reader not to mistake the strong presentment of one side of a 
question for a judicial decision on the whole case. So shocked 
was he when it was pointed out to him that his teaching might 
be taken too literally, that he actually suppressed the magnificent 
passages I have read to you lest his meaning should be misunder- 
stood. 
For each of us, then, the safest path lies somewhere between 
these limits, though thousands lead dull or unsuccessful lives 
because they shape their course perilously near to one or other of 
them. My object to-day is to warn you against the two ex- 
tremes, not to attempt to lay down rules which shall point out 
the best course between them, rules which could not serve for all 
characters and dispositions alike. Do not forget that nothing 
considerable is achieved without concentration. Remember 
that he who holds himself free to cast aside every interest which 
does not directly bear on the central object of his life purchases 
this freedom ‘‘ witha great price. ” 
Let us next inquire what a university can do to guide the 
student in his choice. And here I may say at once that in my 
opinion the methods which have been ofhcially adopted have 
been open to grave criticism ; and that even if this were not so, 
the secondary are at least as important as the primary effects of 
a university training. 
The direct official method of promoting general knowledge 
has been to insist that the candidate must pass an examination 
NO. 1564, VOL. 60] 
in several diverse suljjects either before or during his passage 
through the university. 
No objection can be raised to regulations which insist that a 
student before entering the university shall have acquired the ele- 
mentary knowledge and have undergone the intellectual training 
which may enable him to undertake more difficult studies ; but 
cultivation is not attained by mastering Latin and Greek up to 
the point at which they become useful engines for cultivation, 
and then throwing them aside for life. To change the metaphor, 
studies so treated are, in the words of Mr. John Morley, 
‘superfluous roots in the mind, which are only planted that 
they may be presently cast out again with infinite distraction 
and waste.” 
Mistakes such as these are due to the fact that, though each 
subject of study when regarded as central is surrounded by 
others which are very different from itself, but which neverthe- 
less prop and support it, these subsidiary subjects are (as a rule) 
not officially recognised in the examinations for a degree. 
Every scientific man would agree that a student who can read 
French and German is better prepared for a scientific career than 
one who, with an equal knowledge of science, can read English 
only. Why not allow to the higher attainments greater weight ? 
Again, there can be ro doubt that a scientific essay or treatise 
written in good English tends more to the advancement of 
“natural knowledge” than if the facts and arguments are 
badly expressed. Why not recognise this fact, as the Depart- 
ment of Science and Art has now done, by giving credit in the 
Honour examinations for the style in which the essays of candi- 
dates are written ? 
By such steps we should, at all events, secure that the teacher 
of science who chooses to take some pains with the essays of his 
students, or who urges them to learn to read French and 
German easily, should not feel that his advice, however useful it 
might ultimately be, would damage rather than improve their 
chances of a high place in the examination for a degree in science. 
Thus, too, we should keep open in the student’s mind avenues 
by which he might attain to some interest in language and 
literature for their own sakes. 
Iam well aware of the objections which might be raised to 
such a scheme ; and though I do not myself attach great weight 
to them, I will now only insist that if they are valid that fact is 
an additional proof of the truth of a proposition, which I do not 
deny, viz. that it is not so much by directing the studies of 
each individual student, as by bringing together teachers and 
learners who are teaching and learning very different things, 
that, by a mental ‘‘law of exchanges,” the interests of all are 
widened. 
It is no doubt a weak point in a college such as ours that 
the range of instruction is limited to science and to some of its 
applications, and that thus you are all studying closely allied 
subjects. Union with other colleges in a university may help 
to remedy this defect. Meanwhile, all that can be done officially 
to promote general cultivation is small compared with what 
you can do for yourselves and for each other, and this because 
you are at liberty to embrace a wider range than any university 
would be justified in forcing upon you. Your success as 
specialists will largely depend upon your studies and your 
teachers. Your wider cultivation will chiefly be the work of 
your relaxations and your friends. 
Do not misunderstand me. In general, a young man with no 
physical defect will and ought to take an interest and a part 
in athletics. In a great metropolis this is even more necessary 
than in the case of universities which, like Oxford, Cambridge, 
St. Andrews or Gottingen, are comparatively in the country. 
I am proud to be the president of a Boat Club which this sum- 
mer won a race in a Thames regatta. I have been treasurer of 
two scientific societies, and am glad to be now the treasurer 
of the United Football Clubs of the engineering departments 
of the London Colleges. I hope and believe that these are 
the germs from which the athletic clubs of the future university 
will spring. I hope and believe that the undergraduates of 
that university will not differ from all other groups of young 
Englishmen in that, while engaged in the cultivation of intellect 
and taste, they neglect the cultivation of thews and sinews. But 
if it be granted that college work and college sports must fill up 
much of the time of all of you, there are still spare but precious 
moments in which you cannot indeed master, but may ward off, 
complete ignorance of things which have little to do with your 
studies or your sports, but are none the less worth knowing and 
loving. You have college societies where such things are discussed 
