September 28, 1905] 



NA TURE 



547 



not suggesting that the specialist training given in a 

 technical institute, though limited, is not an excellent 

 thing in itself ; or that, in certain conditions and circum- 

 stances, it is not desirable to have such a training, attested 

 by a diploma or certiiicate, instead of aiming at a Uni- 

 versity standard and a University degree. Universities 

 themselves recognise this fact. They reserve their degrees 

 for those who have had a University training ; but they 

 also grant diplomas for proficiency in certain special 

 branches of knowledge. Cambridge, for instance, gives a 

 diploma in the Science and Practice of Agriculture ; and 

 the examinations for the diploma are open to persons who 

 are not members of the University. 



But the University training, whatever its subject, ought 

 to give something which the purely specialist training does 

 not give. What do we understand by a University educa- 

 tion? What are its distinctive characteristics? The word 

 Universitas, as you know, is merely a general term for 

 a corporation, specially applied in the Middle Ages to a 

 body of persons associated for purposes of study, who, by 

 becoming a corporation, acquired certain immunities and 

 privileges. Though a particular University might be 

 strongest in a particular faculty, as Bologna was in Law 

 and Paris in Theology, yet it is a traditional attribute 

 of such a body that several different branches of higher 

 study shall be represented in it. It is among the dis- 

 tinctive advantages of a University that it brings together 

 in one place students — by whom I mean teachers as well 

 as learners — of various subjects. By doing this the Uni- 

 versity tends to produce a general breadth of intellectual 

 interests and sympathies ; it enables the specialist to 

 acquire some sense of the relations between his own 

 pursuit and other pursuits ; he is helped to perceive the 

 largeness of knowledge. But, besides bringing together 

 students of various subjects, it is the business of a Uni- 

 versity to see that each subject shall be studied in such 

 a manner as to afford some general discipline of the mental 

 faculties. In his book on " The Idea of a University " 

 Newman says : — 



" This process of training, by which the intellect, in- 

 stead of being formed or sacrificed to some particular or 

 accidental purpose, some specific trade or profession, or 

 study or science, is disciplined for its own sake, for the. 

 perception of its own proper object, and for its own 

 highest culture, is called Liberal Education ; and though 

 there is no one in whom it is carried as far as is con- 

 ceivable, or whose intellect would be a pattern of what 

 intellects should be made, yet there is scarcely anyone 

 but may gain an idea of what real training is, and at 

 least look towards it, and make its true scope and result, 

 not something else, his standard of excellence ; and 

 numbers there are who may submit themselves to it and 

 secure it to themselves in good measure. And to set forth 

 the right standard, and to train according to it, and to 

 help forward all students towards it according to their 

 various capacities, this I conceive to be the business of 

 a University." 



It may be granted that the function of a University, 

 as Newman here describes it, is not always realised ; 

 Universities, like other human institutions, have their 

 failures. But his words truly express the aim and 

 tendency of the best University teaching. It belongs to 

 the spirit of such teaching that it should nourish and 

 sustain ideals ; and a University can do nothing better for 

 its sons than that ; a vision of the ideal can guard 

 monotony of work from becoming monotony of life. But 

 there is yet another element of University training which 

 must not be left out of account ; it is, indeed, among the 

 most vital of all. I mean that informal education which 

 young men give to each other. Many of us, probably, in 

 looking back on our undergraduate days, could say that 

 the society of our contemporaries was not the least powerful 

 of the educational influences which we experienced. The 

 social life of the Colleges at Oxford and Cambridge is a 

 most essential part of the training received there. In 

 considering the questions of the higher education in South 

 Africa it is well to remember that the social intercourse 

 of young students, under conditions such as ,a great resi- 

 dential L'niversity . might provide, is an instrument of 

 education which nothing else can replace. And it might 



be added that such social intercourse is also an excellent 

 thing for the teachers. 



The highest education, when it bears its proper fruit, 

 gives not knowledge only, but mental culture. A man 

 may be learned, and yet deficient in culture ; that fact is 

 implied by the word "pedantry." "Culture," said 

 Huxley, " certainly means something quite different from 

 learning or technical skill. It implies the possession of an 

 ideal, and the habit of critically estimating the value of 

 things by a theoretic standard." " It is the love of 

 knowledge," says Henry Sidgwick, "the ardour of scien- 

 tific curiosity, driving us .continually to absorb new facts 

 and ideas, to make them our own, and fit them into the 

 living and growing system of our thought ; and the trained 

 faculty of doing this, the alert and supple intelligence 

 exercised and continually developed in doing this — it is in 

 these that culture essentially lies." .And if this is what 

 culture really means, evidently it cannot be regarded as 

 something superfine — as an intellectual luxury suited only 

 for people who can lead lives of elegant leisure. Education 

 consists in organising the resources of the human being ; 

 it seeks to give him powers which shall fit him for his 

 social and physical world. One mark of an uneducated 

 person is that he is embarrassed by any situation to which 

 he is not accustomed. The educated person is able to deal 

 with circumstances in which he has never been placed 

 before ; he is so, because he has acquired general con- 

 ceptions ; his imagination, his judgment, his powers of 

 intelligent sympathy have been developed. The mental 

 culture which includes such attributes is of inestimable 

 value in the practical work of life, and especially in work 

 of a pioneer kind. It is precisely in a country which 

 presents new problems, where novel difficulties of all sorts 

 have to be faced, where social and political questions 

 assume complex forms for which experience furnishes no 

 exact parallels, it is precisely there that the largest and 

 best gifts which the higher education can confer are most 

 urgently demanded. 



But how is culture, as distinct from mere knowledge, 

 to be attained? The question arises as soon as we turn 

 from the machinery of the higher education to consider 

 its essence, and the general aims which it has in view. 

 Culture cannot be secured by planning courses of study, 

 nor can it be adequately tested by the most ingenious 

 system of examinations. But it would be generally 

 allowed that a University training, if it is really successful, 

 ought to result in giving culture, over and above such 

 knowledge as the student may acquire in his particular 

 branch or branches of study. We all know what Matthew 

 Arnold did, a generation ago, to interpret and diffuse in 

 England his conception of culture. The charm, the 

 humour, and also the earnestness of the essays in which 

 he pleaded that cause render them permanently attractive 

 in themselves, while at the same time they have the 

 historical interest of marking a phase in the progress of 

 English thought and feeling about education. For, indeed, 

 whatever may be the criticisms to which .Arnold's treat- 

 ment of the subject is open in detail, he truly indicated 

 a great national defect ; and by leading a multitude of 

 educated persons to realise it, he helped to prepare the 

 way for better things. Dealing with England as it was 

 in the 'sixties, he complained that the bulk of the well- 

 to-do classes were devoid of mental culture — crude in their 

 perceptions, insensible to beauty, and complacently im- 

 penetrable to ideas. If, during the last thirty or forty 

 years, there has been a marked improvement, the popular 

 influence of Matthew Arnold's writings may fairly be 

 numbered among the contributory causes, though other 

 and much more potent causes have also been at work. 

 When we examine Arnold's own conception of culture, as 

 expressed in successive essaj-s. we find that it goes through 

 a process of evolution. At first he means by " culture " 

 a knowledge and love of the best literature, ancient and 

 modern, and the influence on mind and manners which 

 flows thence. Then his conception of culture becomes 

 enlarged ; it is now no longer solely or mainly festhetic, 

 but also intellectual ; it includes receptivity of new ideas ; 

 it is even the passion for " seeing things as they really 

 are." But there is yet a further development. True 

 culture, in his final view, is not only aesthetic and intel- 

 lectual ; it is also moral and spiritual ; its aim is, in his 



NO. 1874, VOL. 72] 



