442 
NATURE 
[ Sept. 10, 1885 
eer rn EEE eee 
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 wellas to store it. The widening of th: bounds 
of knowledge, literary or scientific, is the crowning 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, 
Sut its condition for success is that our science chairs should be 
greatly increased so that teachers should not be wholly absorbed 
inthe duties of instruction. Germany subdivides the sciences 
into various chairs, and gives to the professors special labora- 
tories. It also makes it a condition for the higher honours of a 
university that the candidates shall give proofs of their ability 
to make original researches. Undersuch asystem, teaching and 
investigation are not incompatible. In the evidence before the 
Science Commission many opinions were yiven that scientific 
men engaged in research should not be burdened with the duties 
of education, and there is much to be said in support of this 
view when a single professor for the whole range of a physical 
science is its only representative in a university. But I hope 
that such a system will not long continue, for if it do we must 
occupy a very inferior position as a nation in the intellectual 
competition of Europe. Research and education in limited 
branches of higher knowledge are not incompatible. It is true 
that Galileo complained of the burden imposed upon him by his 
numerous astronomical pupils, though few other philosophers 
have echoed this complaint. Newton, who produced order in 
worlds, and Dalton, who brought atoms under the reign of order 
and number, rejoiced in their pupils. Lalande spread astronomers 
as Liebig spread chemists, and Johannes Miiller biologists, all 
over the world. Laplace, La Grange, Dulong, Gay Lussac, 
Berthollet, and Dumas were professors as well as discoverers in 
France. In England our discoverers have generally been teachers. 
In fact, I recollect only three notable examples of men who were 
not—Boyle, Cavendish, and Joule. It was so in ancient as well 
as inmodern times, for Plato and Aristotle taught and philo- 
sophised. If you do not make the investigator a schoolmaster, 
as Dalton was, and as practically our professors are at the present 
time, with the duty of teaching all branches of their sciences, 
the mere elementary truths as well as the highest generalisations 
being compressed into a course, it is well that they should be 
brought into contact with the world in which they live, so as to 
know its wants and -aspirations. They could then quicken the 
pregnant minds around them, and extend to others their own 
power and love of research. Goethe had a fine perception of 
this when he wrote— 
Wer in der Weltgeschichte lebt, 
Wer in die Zeiten schaut, und strebt, 
Nur der ist werth, zu sprechen und zu dichten- 
Our universities are still far from the attainment of a proper 
combination of their resources between teaching and research. 
Eyen Oxford and Cambridge, which have done so much in recent 
years in the equipment of laboratories and in adding to their 
scientific staff, are still far behind a second-class German univer- 
sity. The professional faculties of the English universities are 
growing, and will diffuse a greater taste for science among their 
students, though they may absorb the time of the limited pro- 
fessoriate so as to prevent it advancing the boundaries of know- 
ledge. Professional faculties are absolutely essential to the 
existence of universities in poor countries like Scotland and 
Ireland. This has been the case from the early days of the 
Bologna University up to the present time. Originally univer- 
sities arose not by mere bulls of popes, but as a response to the 
strong-desire of the professional classes to dignify their crafts by 
real knowledge. If their education had been limited to mere 
technical schools like the Medical School of Salerno which 
flourished in the eleventh century, length but not breadth would 
have been given to education. So the universities wisely joined 
culture to the professional sciences. Poor countries like Scotland 
and Ireland must have their academic systems based on the pro- 
fessional faculties, although wealthy universities like Oxford and 
Cambridge may continue to have them as mere supplements to 
a more general education. A greater liberality of support on 
the part of the State in the establishment of chairs of science, 
for the sake of science and not merely for the teaching of the 
professions, would enable the poorer universities to take their 
part in the advancement of knowledge. 
T have already alluded to the foundation of new colleges in 
different parts of the kingdom. Owens College has worthily 
developed into the Victoria University. Formerly she depended 
for degrees on the University of London. No longer will she 
be like a moon reflecting cold and sickly rays from a distant 
luminary, for in future she will be a sun, a centre of intelligence, 
warming and illuminating the regions around her. The other 
colleges which have formed themselves in large manufacturing 
districts are remarkable expressions from them that science must 
be promoted. Including the colleges of a high class, such as 
University College and King’s College in London, and the three 
Queen’s Colleges in Ireland, the aggregate attendance of students 
in colleges without university rank is between nine and ten 
thousand, while that of the universities is fifteen thousand. No 
doubt some of the provincial colleges require considerable im- 
provement in their teaching methods ; sometimes they unwisely 
aim ata full university curriculum when it would be better for 
them to act as faculties.  Still,sthey are all growing in the spirit 
of self-help, and some of them are destined, like Owens College, 
to develop into universities. This is not a subject of alarm to 
lovers of education, while it is one of hope and encouragement 
to the great centres of industry. There are too few autonomous 
universities in England in proportion to its population. While 
Scotland, with a population of 3} millions, has four universities 
with 6590 students, England, with 26 millions of people, has 
only the same number of teaching universities with 6000 students. 
Unless English colleges havesuch ambition, they may be turned 
into mere mills to grind out material for examinations and compe- 
titions. Higher colleges should always hold before their students 
that knowledge, for its own sake, is the only object worthy of 
reverence. Beyond college life there is a land of research flow- 
ing with milk and honey for those who know how to cultivate it. 
Colleges should at least show a Pisgah view of this Land of 
Promise, which stretches far beyond the Jordan of examinations 
and competitions. 
V. Science and Industry.—In the popular mind the value of 
science is measured by its applications to the useful purposes of 
life. It is no doubt true that science wears a beautiful aspect 
when she confers practical benefits upon man. But truer rela- 
tions of science to industry are implied in Greek mythology. 
Vulcan, the god of industry, wooed science, in the form of 
Minerva, with a passionate love, but the chaste goddess never 
married, although she conferred upon mankind nearly as many 
arts as Prometheus, who, like other inventors, saw civilisation 
progressing by their use while he lay groaning in want on Mount 
Caucasus. The rapid development of industry in modern days 
depends on the applications of scientific knowledge, while its 
slower growth in former times was due to experiments being 
made by trial and error in order to gratify the needs of man. 
Then an experiment was less a questioning of Nature than an 
exercise on the mind of the experimentalist. For a true ques- 
tioning of Nature only arises when intellectual conceptions of 
the causes of phenomena attach themselves to ascertained facts 
as well as to their natural environments. Much real science 
had at one time accumulated in Egypt, Greece, Rome, and 
Arabia, though it became obscured by the intellectual darkness 
which spread over Europe like a pall for many centuries. The 
mental results of Greek science, filtered through the Romans 
and Arabians, gradually fertilised the soil of Europe. Even in 
ages which are deemed to be dark and unprolific, substantial 
though slow progress was made. By the end of the fifteenth 
century the mathematics of the Alexandrian school had become 
the possession of Western Europe ; Arabic numerals, algebra, 
trigonometry, decimal reckoning, and an improved calendar 
having been added to its stock of knowledge. The old dis- 
coverles of Democritus and Archimedes in physics, and of 
Hipparchus and Ptolemy in astronomy, were producing their 
natural developments, though with great slowness. Many manu- 
factures, growing chiefly by experience, and occasionally 
lightened up by glimmerings of science throughout the pre- 
vailing darkness, had arisen before the sixteenth century. A 
knowledge of the properties of bodies, though scarcely of their 
relations to each other, came through the labours of the 
alchemists, who had a mighty_impulse to work ; for by the 
philosopher’s stone, often not larger than half a rape’s seed, they 
hoped to attain the three sensuous conditions of human enjoy- 
ment—gold, health, and immortality. By the end of the 
fifteenth century many important manufactures were founded 
by empirical experiment, with only the uncertain guidance of 
science. Among these were the compass, printing, paper, gun- 
