14 REPORT—1885. 
higher education. Manchester has already its university. Nottingham, 
Birmingham, Leeds, and Bristol have colleges more or less complete. 
Liverpool converts a disused lunatic asylum into a college for sane people. 
Cardiff rents an infirmary for a collegiate building. Dundee, by private 
benefaction, rears a Baxter College with larger ambitions. All these 
are healthy signs that the public are determined to have advanced science 
teaching ; but the resources of the institutions are altogether inadequate 
to the end in view. Evenin the few cases where the laboratories are effi- 
cient for teaching purposes, they are inefficient as laboratories for research. 
Under these circumstances the Royal Commission on Science advocates 
special Government laboratories for research. Such laboratories, sup- 
ported by public money, are as legitimate subjects for expenditure as 
galleries for pictures or sculpture; but I think that they would not be 
successful, and would injure science if they failed. It would be safer in 
the meantime if the State assisted universities or well-established colleges 
to found laboratories of research under their own care. Even sucha 
proposal shocks our Chancellor of the Exchequer, who tells us that this 
country is burdened with public debt, and has ironclads to build and 
arsenals to provide. Nevertheless our wealth is proportionally much 
greater than that of foreign States which are competing with so much 
vigour in the promotion of higher education. They deem such expenditure 
to be true economy, and do not allow their huge standing armies to be 
an apology for keeping their people backwards in the march of knowledge. 
France, which in the last ten years has been spending a million annually 
on university education, had a war indemnity to pay, and competes suc- 
cessfully with this country in ironclads. Hither all foreign States are 
strangely deceived in their belief that the competition of the world has 
become a competition of intellect, or we are marvellously unobservant of 
the change which is passing over Europe in the higher education of the 
people. Preparations for war will not ensure to us the blessings and 
security of an enlightened peace. Protective expenditure may be wise, 
though productive expenditure is wiser. 
Were half the powers which fill the world with terror, 
Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and courts, 
Given to redeem the human mind from error— 
There were no need of arsenals and forts, 
Universities are not mere storehouses of knowledge; they are also 
conservatories for its cultivation. In Mexico there is a species of ant which 
sets apart some of its individuals to act as honey-jars by monstrously 
extending their abdomens to store the precious fluid till it is wanted 
by the community. Professors in a university have a higher function, 
because they ought to make new honey as well as to store it. The 
widening of the bounds of knowledge, literary or scientific, is the crown- 
ing glory of university life. Germany unites the functions of teaching 
and research in the universities, while France keeps them in separate 
institutions. The former system is best adapted to our habits, but its 
