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NATURE 



[January 23, 1908 



ment had to provide education, not of a sectarian kind, but 

 in an atmosphere which would not offend sectarian pre- 

 judices. The negative was a very different thing from the 

 affirmative in that matter, and if that was attained he 

 did not see why education could not be given to Belfast 

 and Dublin, to the Presbyterians and Catholics of Ireland 

 alike, an education of a university type which would not 

 run athwart those feelings and considerations which ob- 

 tained to so high a degree among the Irish people. That 

 was a step in the direction of solving a very difficult 

 problem which had embarrassed Governments before now 

 and which might embarrass this one, but they hoped to 

 try, and it was a sign of the times that they should try. 

 In Scotland a step forward in the spirit of that guild had 

 been taken very recently. They had brought the teachers 

 into close relation with the Scottish universities. The 

 training of those teachers used to be undertaken by the 

 churches. It was no want of reverence or respect for the 

 churches which led him, speaking from that platform, to 

 say that in Scotland they preferred that the universities 

 should train their teachers rather than that they should be 

 trained in any denominational atmosphere, however excel- 

 lent. He was not touching in the least on the question of 

 denominational colleges. The university, after all, ought 

 to be at the head of education, and to permeate downwards, 

 and could not do that unless it trained the teachers for 

 the work. It was not only in the direction of university 

 teaching that the signs of the permeation of the new spirit 

 were to be seen, and in the departments of the Government 

 numerous little things had happened lately to show how 

 progress was being made. In these days science was be- 

 coming more and more of moment in the race between 

 nations. No industrial community could retain its place 

 unless it had got the highest science at its disposal. If 

 he were to adopt a motto for that guild, it would be the 

 motto of a German trade association, which ran : — " Science 

 is the golden guiding star of practice ; without science there 

 can be only a blind groping about in the region of undefined 

 possibilities." The change that had come over things in 

 the last fifty or sixty years was immense. Without science 

 no one could organise his business ; without science no 

 nation could keep its place in the van. Therefore he said 

 that one of the great responsibilities of a nation was not 

 only to keep her knowledge in the minds of a few in- 

 dividuals abreast of the age, not only to produce her 

 Kelvins and her Darwins, but to see that her science was 

 disseminated, and that it had entered the minds and actuated 

 the endeavours of her captains of industry generally. That 

 was the creed of that guild, and that was the lesson which 

 they had come together to endeavour to teach. 



In moving the adoption of the report, the Vice- 

 Chancellor of Oxford said that in the report they would 

 find some remarks and some criticism, implied rather than 

 developed, upon the older universities. Speaking for 

 Oxford, he did not deprecate that criticism. He desired 

 measures and large measures of reform in Oxford and her 

 colleges. He did not agree with his friend the Bishop of 

 Birmingham in invoking as a first step the interference 

 of the State. He would like to see O.xford reform herself. 

 But he fully recognised that when the Government had 

 given her, as it had, this opportunity of doing so, if she 

 failed to use that opportunity this Government, or any 

 other Government, would have strong justification for step- 

 ping in and reforming her from outside. He wished to 

 see reform both in her constitution and her curriculum, 

 both in the colleges and the university. On what lines 

 should that reform proceed? He would say on the lines 

 indicated by the British .Science Guild. They would find 

 in the report a suggestion that college funds might be 

 more largely used to aid the university. He believed they 

 might, and he believed they ought to be more largely used 

 in this way. But they would find also a recommendation 

 that the new universities should be provided with funds 

 to establish hostels such as the colleges at Oxford and 

 Cambridge very largely were. He took it that the British 

 Science Guild did not want to abolish the colleges. He 

 certainly thought that would be a pity. Hostels they were, 

 but they were something more than hostels. Some would 

 say they were only glorified hostels. He would sav they 

 were glorious hostels. Trinity College and King's College 



1^0. 1995, VOL. ']']^^ 



at Cambridge and Christ Church and New College and 

 Magdalen at Oxford — he thought all who knew them would 

 agree that they merited that description, and that their 

 glory was part of the educating influence and the attract- 

 ing spell of the older universities, that they were an aca- 

 demic, aye ! and a national asset which it would be folly to 

 throw away or destroy. In the appendix to the report 

 there were some remarks about the tardy and sluggish 

 response on behalf of the private benefactor to the appeal 

 of the University of Cambridge, to the unattractiveness of 

 the universities generally to the benefactor. To bring that 

 appendix up to date mention should be made of a new 

 fact. The president had brought the report up to date by 

 referring to the splendid gift that was announced in the 

 Times of that morning, the gift that one of the heads of 

 a great and generous family in the ancient city of Bristol 

 had made to its college. Might he, as an old Bristolian, 

 ask them to send their thanks to that generous family 

 which had already done so much for that city, and had 

 now come forward with this benefaction ? He remembered 

 the famous motto in which Bob Lowe suggested that 

 money might be made out of matches — ex luce lucellum. 

 He thought the Wills family had taken a better motto. 

 Theirs seemed to be ex finno dare lucem. They had all 

 read, a fevv weeks ago. of the magnificent bequest left by Sir 

 W. Pearce to the Royal and religious foundation of Trinity 

 College, Cambridge — money made, by the way, in applied 

 science ; it was enough to make, and he believed made, 

 mouths water, not only in the University of Cambridge, 

 but in the other colleges of Cambridge, and in some col- 

 leges in Oxford too. For his part he welcomed that 

 bequest. He congratulated his old friends of Trinity 

 College. It was a great example. If Trinity used it well, 

 and he believed the college of Newton and Clerk Maxwell, 

 and Macaulay and Tennyson, would use it well for the 

 public benefit of the university, not for any self-aggrandise- 

 ment, it would be a greater example still, and might welt 

 prove contagious. He thought that college funds should be 

 used much more largely for the university, and that the 

 college should be brought into closer and more responsible 

 relation with the university. He thought, too, that the 

 university needed reform in its curriculum. If there was 

 anything about which he had been persistently keen all 

 through his academic course it had been the desire to 

 introduce science into the regular and compulsory curri- 

 culum of Oxford, to ensure that everyone who took the 

 ordinarv degree should at least know what science and the 

 scientific attitude of mind were like. But he did not want 

 literature excluded. The ideal was, he thought, that all 

 literary men should be scientific and scientific men literary. 

 The highest ideal, to his mind, would be that Oxford 

 scientific men should know Greek, for Greek literature was 

 the most educating literature, and the Greek language the 

 finest language that an Englishman could study. But he 

 was afraid that was not practicable, and if they were not 

 to know Greek, thev should know our own splendid litera- 

 ture, the next in fertility and force to that of Greece. They 

 should know, too, the lucidity of French and the philo- 

 sophy of German. If they could not study Sophocles and 

 Plato, let them at least study Bacon and Pascal, Goethe 

 ••ind Tennyson. 



.Sir .'\. Geikic, K.C.B., Sec.R.S., in secondine: *hc 

 motion, remarked that one great function of the 

 Guild is to lose no opportunity of saying a word in 

 sea«;on and out of season to educate the Government 

 and the people to realise that, unless we have a scien- 

 tific spirit and method, we cannot compete with 

 nations ' which are working in that spirit and by 

 that method. 



After the adoption of the report, the following vice- 

 presidents were appointed upon the proposal of Sir 

 William Bousfield, ^:econded by Sir John Rhys : — Lord 

 Curzon, the Rev. the Hon. E. Lyttelton, Lord Iveagh. 

 and the Priine Ministers of Australia, Cape Colony, 

 New Zealand, and Natal. 



Sir E. Busk moved, and Mr. F. ^'erney, M.P., 

 seconded, a resolution, which was carried, aporoving 

 of the members of the executive committee. Prof. R. 

 Meldola, F.R.S., then moved a vote of thanks to the 



