NATURE 



THURSDAY, JULY 6, 1905. 



THE EMPIRE AXD UNIVERSITY LIFE. 



WE publish to-dav a statement signed by more 

 than forty professors and heads of depart- 

 ments of the University of Oxford setting forth a 

 scheme for large increase in the facilities for 

 research and for teaching. We have no hesitation 

 in stating that these forty signatures include the 

 majority of Oxford workers with a reputation for 

 learning which extends beyond the borders of that 

 ancient university. They also represent, with singular 

 completeness, the varied lines of research which 

 happily are pursued at Oxford ; and it is an encourage- 

 ment among the many unsatisfactory features in the 

 intellectual life of the nation that they are ready and 

 willing to stand side by side, each sympathising with 

 the needs of other workers, each desiring to grant 

 the fullest opportunities for research on the broadest 

 lines. 



They doubtless feel in Oxford, as we recognise in 

 London, and as Britain generally is beginning to 

 know, that the real conflict in this country is not 

 between science and classics, between theology and 

 philosophy, or between the true followers of any 

 branches of learning, but that the great educational 

 struggle of our time and race is of an utterly different 

 kind. On the one side are ranged those who hold 

 that the much needed intellectual inspiration of our 

 youth can only be received in an atmosphere of re- 

 search, cap only be given by men who are themselves 

 researchers ; on the opposite side stand those who 

 uphold the ancient Chinese and the modern British 

 educational methods. We recognise to the full the 

 Imperial importance of the subject. Young men in- 

 structed by purveyors of second-hand word knowledge 

 are not likely to develop the germs of imagination 

 and originality, and to deal effectively with the 

 problems presented in the modern world which deals 

 with things ; and the time in which such development 

 is generally possible is all too brief. When once the 

 critical period of intellectual growth has been devoted 

 solely to the collection and re-collection of material for 

 the examiner, any awakening of original power is 

 rare indeed. We have merely created one Briton the 

 more incapable of using his birthright, out of sym- 

 pathy with the movement which would help others to 

 gain what he has lost; and his want of sympathy 

 may mean a great deal. He may become a journalist 

 and help to frame the opinion of the nation, he may 

 enter Parliament and help to marshal the educational 

 forces upon which our future existence most surely 

 depends, he may be a power in the Treasury and help 

 to determine the expenditure of the national income, 

 he may become a schoolmaster or a college tutor and 

 do unto others even as he has been done by. 



It cannot be disguised that things are in many 

 respects worse than they were half a century ago. 

 The University Commissioners of 1850 said of 

 NO. 1862, VOL. 72] 



Oxford : — " It is generally acknowledged that both 

 Oxford and the country at large suffer greatly from 

 the absence of a body of learned men devoting their 

 lives to the cultivation of science, and to the direction 

 of academical education." 



The commissioners of a quarter of a century later 

 did, indeed, largely increase the number of university 

 professors, but it left them powerless — muzzled lions 

 chained by the leg. The whole power of influencing 

 the passing generations of young men it left in the 

 hands of a score of independent corporations — nearly 

 all of them ancient, and with noble traditions of high 

 learning and profound research ; but, in the intel- 

 lectual backwater of our time, each has strained to 

 become a petty university and the successful rival of 

 all the other petty universities — the successful rival, 

 that is, in the qualities developed by examination, and 

 in nothing higher. To this end each has freely spent 

 its endowment in entrance scholarships to compete 

 with others for the men who will do best in examin- 

 ations, and each has striven to secure, before and 

 beyond all others, the most successful purveyor of 

 knowledge which will be useful in examinations. We 

 say, intentionally and deliberately, that each college 

 has done these things, but are far from implying that 

 all of them have no higher aims at the present time. 

 We are only too glad to recognise in recent years a 

 change of spirit which has led to significant de- 

 partures from the scheme of the last university com- 

 missioners. Magdalen, New College, and Brasenose 

 have been noble leaders in a noble cause — the return 

 of Oxford to ideals of learning which have been sup- 

 pressed, but not altogether killed, by a false and in- 

 jurious educational system. We gladly recognise 

 clear evidence of the same spirit in other societies, 

 and we are well aware that others, again, strongly 

 desire to make provision for the highest learning, but 

 are unable to do so while their whole available funds 

 barely suffice to enable them to keep their place in 

 the unfortunate and wasteful inter-collegiate com- 

 petition which dominates both our ancient universi- 

 ties. There is, however, one college in which the 

 necessity for such competition is reduced to a mini- 

 mum, and it is precisely here that the last com- 

 missioners inflicted the crowning injury upon the 

 intellectual life of Oxford — they set their seal on the 

 existing constitution of AU Souls. .\ college almost 

 without the responsibility and the care of under- 

 graduates is created, it would seem, to be the home 

 of the highest learning and research. .'\nd what is 

 it? Well, apart from a distinguished professoriate, a 

 generous assistance to the Bodleian, and a rare and 

 occasional election of men of learning to her fellow- 

 ships — for all of which we freely and gladly express 

 our gratitude — All Souls merely exists in order to 

 encourage the worst features of an intellectual train- 

 ing which exists by and for examination alone. Only 

 recently the governing body rejected the move- 

 ment, which happily existed among some of the 

 members, to ask for evidence of original power in 

 the candidates who compete for the fellowships. Yet 



