NATURE 



?8i 



THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 1881 



PROFESSOR MAX MUELLER A T UNIVERSITY 

 COLLEGE 



UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, London, is to be con- 

 gratulated on the fresh step which was celebrated 

 on Wednesday last week. The new wing which was then 

 formally opened, and which will be largely devoted to 

 scientific teaching, and let us hope research as well, will 

 give the College more elbow-room in its career. Of 

 course the "toasting" and speechifying at the dinner 

 were largely collegiate, the speakers generally express- 

 ing their approval of the principles upon which Uni- 

 versity College and similar institutions have been 

 founded. We have repeatedly called attention not only 

 to the admirable educational work which University Col- 

 lege has done since its foundation, but to the influence it 

 has had on the higher teaching all over the country. Not 

 only has it been in a sense the parent of not a few similar 

 institutions, the number of which is almost every year on 

 the increase, but it has undoubtedly had much to do with 

 rousing from the lethargy of generations the two oldest 

 and wealthiest universities of the country. Much as has 

 been done recently in the way of reforming these two 

 great educational centres, the work has been little more 

 than begun. The advocates of university reform may 

 therefore congratulate themselves that Prof iVIax JVIiiller 

 was called upon to reply to the toast of " British 

 Universities." His reply was not likely to be, and 

 certainly was not, compounded of the common-places 

 usually uttered on such occasions. Prof. Max Miiller 

 has reason to be grateful to Oxford, and his gratitude 

 he expressed in terms of genuine tenderness. "At the 

 same time," he went on to say, " O.xford, or at all 

 events my friends at Oxford, have no feelings but those 

 of sincere rejoicing at the springing up, and growing, and 

 spreading of what may be called the young universities, 

 the universities of the future. We watch them rising in 

 every part of England as we watch the rising of new 

 planets. We greet them as on a stormy night we greet 

 new lighthouses coming into sight and shooting their rays 

 of electric light through the darkness — yes, the darkness 

 of this so-called enlightened century, the darkness visible, 

 and best visible to those who have spent their lives in the 

 study of even the smallest subject, and know how every 

 one of them still bristles with problems that cannot be 

 solved without a large collection of new facts, and with- 

 out bringing to bear on them more powerful batteries of 

 thought than are yet at our command." 



Prof Miiller was so far loyal to his Alma Maier a.s to 

 admit that the Oxford of the past has done good work ; 

 but the Oxford of the present is doing better work, and 

 we trust with him that the Oxford of the future will do 

 infinitely better work still. How the desirable end is to 

 be accomplished is a problem that all true friends of 

 learning in the country are anxious to have solved, and 

 to attempt to solve which the recent Universities Com- 

 missioners were appointed. We do not mean at present 

 to criticise the work which these Commissioners have 

 been attempting to do ; how far short that work is of 

 anjlihing like a high standard of reform may best be seen 

 Vol. xxiii.^No. 591 



by comparing what is known of their recommendations 

 with the aspirations expressed in Prof. I\L\x Muller's 

 admirable speech. 



"To compare the work that O.xford or Cambridge 

 could do, and ought to do, with that of any other uni- 

 versity, whether British or Continental, is simply absurd. 

 Oxford, with its excellent material, the well-fed and well- 

 bred youth of these islands ; Oxford, with its many 

 students who have not to work for their bread; Oxford,, 

 with its rich colleges and libraries and fellowships, can 

 do for the advancement of learning fifty times over what 

 Giessen or even Leipsic can do. Oxford and Cambridge 

 could beggar the whole world and make the old univer- 

 sities the home of all English genius, all English learning, 

 all English art, all English virtue." 



Alas, how far are we from realising what Prof. Miiller 

 modestly called his " German dreams " ! But that these 

 "dreams'' arc perfectly realisable Prof. Miiller went on 

 to show by facts and figures based on the report of the 

 Commissioners themselves. Why, in accordance with 

 his suggestion, should a certain number of prize fellow- 

 ships at Oxford not be thrown open to the whole of Eng- 

 land? Prof. Miiller 3 suggested scheme is as wide and 

 liberal as the most advanced friends of education could 

 wish, including the practical endowment of research in 

 all departments of literature, science, and art. 



"Prize Fellowships," he went on to say, "are in future 

 to be tenable for five or seven years only. This is quite 

 right. But if after five or seven years a young man has 

 developed a taste for scientific work and wishes to con- 

 tinue it, then let him have a second Fellowship, again 

 with duties attached to it, and let that man, with the pro- 

 ceeds of two Fellowships, do the work and fill the place 

 which the Extraordinary Professors fill in Continental 

 universities. Lastly, if after another five years the few 

 who remain true to a scientific life can show that 

 they have done good work and are able and willing to 

 do still better work, let them have a third Fellowship and 

 become permanent Professors in the University on an 

 income of about 1000/. a year for life. I must not enter 

 into fuller detail," Prof. Miiller went on, " I only wanted 

 to sketch out to you how the national funds of national 

 universities could be made to subserve truly national 

 interests : how Prize Fellowships could be made a bless- 

 ing both to the giver and the receiver, and how England 

 could stamp out of the ground an army of, call them 

 soldiers, or missionaries, or colonists, or men — true men 

 of science, such as the past has never dreamt of. All this 

 could be done to-morrow, and no one would suffer from 

 it. I know I shall be told — in fact I have been told — 

 that such changes are far too great ; that the fathers who 

 send their boys to Oxford and Cambridge would not ap- 

 prove them, and — this is always the last trump — that 

 public opinion is against them. With regard to public 

 opinion, if public opinion — if Parliament — is against us 

 we must bow and wait. As to the fathers of boys — ces 

 pires dc famille—\ am one of them myself, and I do not 

 think we are always the most disinterested judges. As 

 to changes, great or small. Nature teaches us that nothing 

 can live which cannot grow and change, and history 

 confirms her lesson that nothing is so fatal to institutions 

 as a faith in their finality." 



The scheme is one which, in its essential points. 



