Sept. 10, 1885 | 
NATURE 
441 
taken place against classical education in France, where their 
own vernacular occupies the position of dead languages, while 
Latin and science are given the same time in the curriculum, In 
England manufacturers cry out for technical education, in which 
classicul culture shall be excluded. In the schools of the middle 
classes science rather than technics is needed, because, when the 
seeds of science are sown, technics as its fruit will appear at 
the appointed time. Epictetus was wise when he told us to 
observe that, though sheep eat grass, it is not grass but wool 
that grows on their backs. Should, however, our grammar- 
schools persist in their refusal to adapt themselves to the needs 
of ascientific age, England must follow the example of other 
European nations and found new modern schools in competition 
with them. For, as Huxley has put it, we cannot continue in 
this age “‘ of full modern artillery to turn out our boys to do battle 
in it, equipped only with the sword and shield of an ancient 
gladiator.” Ina scientific and keenly competitive age an ex- 
clusive education in the dead languages is a perplexing anomaly. 
The flowers of literature should be cultivated and gathered, 
though it is not wise to send men into our fields of industry to 
gather the harvest when they have been taught only to cull the 
poppies and to push aside the wheat. 
IV. Science and the Universities.—The State has always felt 
bound to alter and improve universities, even when their en- 
dowments are so large as to render it unnecessary to support 
them by public funds. When universities are poor, Parliament 
gives aid to them from imperial taxation. In this country that 
aid has been given with a very sparing hand. Thus the univer- 
sities and colleges of Ireland haye received about 30,000/. an- 
nually, and the same sum has been granted to the four univer- 
sities of Scotland. Compared with imperial aid to foreign 
universities such sums are small. A single German university 
like Strassburg or Leipsic receives about 40,000/. annually, or 
10,000/. more than the whole colleges of Ireland or of Scot- 
land. Strassburg, for instance, has had her university and its 
library rebuilt at a cost of 711,000/., and receives an annual 
subscription of 43,0007. In rebuilding the University of Strass- 
burg eight laboratories have been provided, so as to equip it 
fully with the modern requirements for teaching and research." 
Prussia, the most economical nation in the world, spends 
391,000/. yearly out of taxation on her universities. 
The recent action of France is still more remarkable. After 
the Franco-German war the Institute of France discussed the 
important question: ‘Pourquoi la France n’a pas trouvé 
@hommes supérieurs au moment du peril?’? The general 
answer was, Because France had allowed university education 
to sink toa lowebb. Before the great Revolution France had 
twenty-three autonomous universities in the provinces. Napo- 
leon desired to found one great university at Paris, and he 
crushed out the others with the hand of a despot, and re- 
modelled the last with the instincts of a drill-sergeant. The 
central university sank so low than in 1868 it is said that only 
8000/. were spent for true academic purposes. Startled by the 
intellectual sterility shown in the war, France has made gigantic 
efforts to retrieve her position, and has rebuilt the provincial 
colleges at a cost of 3,280,000/., while her annual budget for 
their support now reaches half a million of pounds. In order 
to open these provincial colleges to the best talent of France, 
more than 500 scholarships have been founded at an annual cost 
of 30,000/. France now recognises that it is not by the num- 
ber of men under arms that she can compete with her great 
neighbour Germany, so she has determined to equal her in 
intellect. You will understand why it is that Germany was 
obliged, even if she had not been willing, to spend such large 
sums in order to equip the university of her conquered province, 
Alsace-Lorraine. France and Germany are fully aware that 
science is the source of wealth and power, and that the only way 
of advancing it is to encourage universities to make researches 
and to spread existing knowledge through the community. 
Other European nations are advancing on the same lines. 
Switzerland is a remarkable illustration of how a country can 
compensate itself for its natural disadvantages by a scientific 
education of its people. Switzerland contains neither coal nor 
the ordinary raw materials of industry, and is separated from 
other countries which might supply them by mountain barriers. 
Yet, by a singularly good system of graded schools, and by the 
* The cost of these laboratories has been as follows :—Chemical Institute, 
35,0007. ; Physical Institute, 28,0007. ; Botanical Institute, 26,0007. ; Ob- 
servatory, 25,000/. ; Anatomy, 42,000/. ; Clinical Surgery, 26,000/. ; Physio- 
logical Chemistry, 16,0007. ; Physiological Institute, 13,9002. 
great technical college of Zurich, she has become a prosperous 
manufacturing country. In Great Britain we have nothing com- 
parable to this technical college, either in magnitude or efficiency. 
Belgium is reorganising its universities, and the State has freed 
the localities from the charge of buildings, and will in future 
equip the universities with efficient teaching resources out of 
public taxation. Holland, with a population of 4,000,000 and 
a Small revenue of 9,000,000/., spends 136,000/. on her four 
universities. Contrast this liberality of foreign countries in the 
promotion of higher instruction with the action of our own 
country. Scotland, like Holland, has four universities, and is 
not very different from it in population, but it only receives 
30,000/. from the State. By a special clause in the Scotch 
Universities Bill the Government asked Parliament to declare 
that under no circumstances should the Parliamentary grant be 
ever increased above 40,000/, According to the views of the 
British Treasury there is a finality in science and in expanding 
knowledge. 
The wealthy universities of Oxford and Cambridge are 
gradually constructing laboratories for science. The merchant 
princes of Manchester have equipped their new Victoria Uni- 
versity with similar laboratories. Edinburgh and Glasgow 
Universities have also done so, partly at the cost of Government 
and largely by private subscriptions. The poorer universities of 
Aberdeen and St. Andrews are still inefficiently provided with 
the modern appliances for teaching science. 
London has one small Government college and two chartered 
colleges, but is wholly destitute of a teaching university. It 
would excite great astonishment at the Treasury if we were to 
make the modest request that the great metropolis, with a 
population of 4,000,000, should be put into as efficient 
academical position as the town of Strassburg, with 104,000 in- 
habitants, by receiving, as that town does, 43,000/. annually for 
academic instruction, and 700,000/. for university buildings. 
Still, the amazing anomaly that London has no teaching uni- 
versity must ere long cease. 
It is a comforting fact that, in spite of the indifference of 
Parliament, the large towns of the kingdom are showing their 
sense of the need of higher education. Manchester has already 
its university. Nottingham, Birmingham, Leeds, and Bristol 
have colleges more or less complete. Liverpool converts a dis- 
used 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. Even in the few 
cases where the laboratories are efficient for teaching purposes, 
they are inefficient as laboratories for research. Under 
these circumstances the Royal Commission on Science advo- 
cated special Government laboratories for research, Such labora- 
tories, supported 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 labora- 
tories of research under their own care. Even such a 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 proportion- 
ally much greater than that of foreign States which are com- 
peting 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 successfully with this country in ironclads. Either all 
foreign States are strangely deceived in their belief that the 
competition of the world has become a competition of intellect, 
or we are maryellously 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 
